The Seven-Pointed Circle
by flee the light
Summary: Non-canon post-Hogwarts trilogy with Hermione as the protagonist. Hermione has never got over how Harry went into the forest to face his death without her. Several years on from that night, a shadowy figure with a mysterious power draws the two of them into a twisted and subversive game she intends to play with the wizarding world. [Harry/Hermione] (eventually)
1. The last of Harry Potter - Chapter 1

This is a non-canonical, three-volume story continuing events a few years after the Battle of Hogwarts, with Hermione as the main protagonist. The emotional connection between Hermione and Harry is central to the story, but all the main characters are treated ok. There are a lot of new characters and situations, and the story takes its time to unfold. Read on if you like.

Thanks to Cata, Ioana and Dorian for being my first readers.

Thanks to Gabilian for pointing out plot holes and asking some very useful questions.

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The Seven-Pointed Circle

Part 1 - The last of Harry Potter

1\. A game by moonlight

Harry Potter stepped off the lane and onto a gravel track. It was past dusk and the sky was already dark, the moon three-quarters full. There were no inhabited places for miles, no urban sea of light to hide the stars. The track led into a wood, past a rusted sign marked 'Nature Reserve' and the remains of a wire fence that had long since been trampled down.

There was no sense of foreboding; only quiet exhilaration. He had no fear of being seen by a Muggle, or by anyone else for that matter. He walked purposefully into the wood, oblivious to the dark, swinging his broom slightly in his hand, the gravel sounding faintly beneath his feet.

He paused at a narrowing of the path, a sudden cold invading his limbs. _Once I walked into a wood at night, to face him._ There was a taste of earth in his mouth, a stiffening of his muscles, an emptiness in his gaze. _I'll go with you_, she had said. _Not a chance, Hermione, not a chance_. The thought strangely comforted him, and the cold faded away as quickly as it had come.

A hundred yards into the wood he came to a clearing. Three figures were visible in the moonlight, two male and one female. Each of them held a broom.

They turned as Harry approached but stayed where they were, leaning casually on their brooms and exchanging a few words out of his earshot.

'Fashionably late,' remarked one of them as he reached their group. The speaker was a youth of about twenty. He had a vaguely shambolic air about him, with a pale, unshaven face and untidy mop of dark brown hair, not unlike Harry's, but without the glasses.

'Or perhaps it was deliberate?'

He smirked at Harry and scrutinised him with keen blue eyes.

'Why would I be on time for a bunch of Slytherins?' asked Harry impatiently, his tone intended to suggest that the idea was faintly ridiculous.

Suddenly humbled, the dark-haired youth nodded gravely, apparently acknowledging the justness of the reply.

'You're welcome, by the way,' Harry added gruffly.

'I'm not sure I follow?'

Harry shook his head.

'Why should I be surprised that you've forgotten what I did for you? Yes, even for you.'

A look of downcast contrition now greeted him.

'Oh my goodness. I can't believe I… You're quite right of course. Thank you for reminding us of how much we owe you, we who so little deserved it.'

Harry shook his head slowly, watching disdainfully as the dark-haired youth took a step towards him.

'But I'm afraid you're used to having to put up with insolence from members of Slytherin house.'

'You're right' Harry replied. 'My expectations of Slytherin are low. I can't say I was expecting any better from you tonight. But apology accepted. Now let's get on with the night's business.'

At that moment their respective looks of contrition and irritation dissolved and were replaced by broad grins. Harry clapped former Slytherin seeker Caius Hanmer on the arm and the two of them shook hands.

'The night's business is ready when you are, Harry,' said Caius, gesturing towards his broom.

'I hope you're going to do a bit better than last time,' remarked Harry. 'I had my doubts as to whether it was worth my while to come.'

'Well _I'm_ glad you decided to come out and play tonight.'

The girl standing next to Caius Hanmer was looking insistently at Harry. She spoke with just the slightest trace of a foreign accent. She had a pale, angular face, brown eyes and long dark brown hair tied back in a ponytail. She was wearing jeans, sneakers and a short leather jacket with a checked shirt visible beneath it. _Just like a Muggle girl_, it occurred to Harry. But Ilaria de Angelis was another former member of the Slytherin quidditch team, a chaser this time. As he formulated his reply he couldn't help but smile.

'I'm here for your sake rather than mine,' he continued in the same nonchalant tone. 'To give you a bit of practice. There are other things I could have been doing this evening.'

A playfully mocking look flashed into Ilaria's eyes.

'We're grateful for the little sacrifices you make for us, Harry. After all, it's understandable, even now, that your friends might think it strange that you would choose to associate with ex-Slytherins.'

Harry prodded the ground with his broom.

'Well, this is a new age of harmony after all, isn't it?'

'Harry, you almost sounded serious there.'

Henoc Lutumba had captained the Slytherin quidditch team in the years immediately after the Battle of Hogwarts. His captainship had brought a spirit of something like fairplay and decency to the team. Although some claimed that in the circumstances Slytherin house had no choice but to appear reformed.

'Don't worry, Harry, I'm not interested in banter, I'm just here to knock you out of the sky.'

Henoc's grin was the warmest and most sincere. He was the most athletic of the three, and the most smartly dressed.

Harry regretted that he hadn't had the opportunity to play the three of them at quidditch. They were a few years younger than he was, but had been kept off the Slytherin team by inferior players.

Harry was about to retort to Henoc when Ilaria drew her wand out of her jacket pocket.

'Boys, boys, let's not waste any more time. Like Harry said, he has other things to do this evening. He'll probably want to get back to them sooner rather than later.'

She cast Harry a sidelong glance that was fleeting enough that the others probably didn't notice it.

'Ilaria's right,' said Harry tersely.

'There's just something I want to mention before we start,' Ilaria continued. 'I've prepared a little surprise for tonight. A little extra something that should make things a bit more interesting.'

'What _are_ you talking about?' asked Caius.

'It's an enchantment I've been developing,' Ilaria replied, unphased. 'It speeds up reaction times.'

'Who says our reaction times need speeding up?' said Caius.

'Yours definitely do,' replied Henoc.

Harry turned to Ilaria.

'In the Muggle sporting world,' he remarked, smiling coolly at her, 'your enchantment would be called a performance enhancing drug.'

Ilaria smirked in reply.

'And you wouldn't do a thing like that, Harry?'

Harry smiled.

'Well, it's like Caius said, I'm not sure my performance needs enhancing.'

Ilaria looked at him even more intently.

'You're very confident, Harry. Sure you won't mind getting beaten by a girl?'

Harry narrowed his eyes.

'I don't intend to get beaten by anyone,' he replied in a quiet voice.

'Of course not,' she replied. 'You are the great Harry Potter after all. What chance does Slytherin have against you? We always lose.'

Harry shrugged.

'That's not my fault, is it?'

Caius laughed quietly to himself.

'That being the case,' replied Ilaria, 'I think _I_ will try and give myself an unfair advantage.'

She took a few steps back, drew out her wand and muttered an incantation under her breath. She stood silently in the clearing, looking rather pleased with herself.

Harry looked at Caius and Henoc, who looked at each other in turn.

'The only way to even this up,' remarked Caius, 'will be for the enchantment to be cast on all of us. You up for it?' he added, looking at Henoc and Harry.

'I will if he will,' Henoc replied, gesturing at Harry.

Harry looked at him, then back at Ilaria.

'What about the three of you under the influence against me, with no unfair advantage?' he proposed.

'Don't you think you're getting a bit too full of yourself?' remarked Caius. Suddenly it wasn't clear whether he was joking or serious.

'Hang on boys,' said Ilaria, piping up. 'This is just supposed to be a game. A way of staving off boredom. We're all friends after all, aren't we?'

Harry felt slightly guilty. Maybe he had been a bit arrogant, a bit too confident in his own abilities. His quidditch days were long gone and there wasn't much call for duelling. That had been one of the reasons why he had agreed to join in with Caius's 'tournaments'.

'You're right,' he said. 'Maybe I shouldn't have risen to the bait. We should all be under the enchantment. So let's give it a go.'

Ilaria smiled at him then cast her spell again, this time over the three of them. Harry felt no different, apart from a little extra eagerness to get onto his broom and get into the sky.

Caius was already astride his broom as he turned to the others.

'Ok, here are tonight's rules: the tournament lasts one hour. The pitch is the territory of this forest and the sky above it. No teams. If you're hit, a floating red x will appear above your head. If you're downed three times by an opponent, you're eliminated. No unforgivable curses. Harry, if you don't mind, we drew lots before you got here to see who goes first. You go last.'

Harry nodded.

'I trust you,' he said drily.

'The start is staggered,' Caius continued, his eyes flashing in the dark. 'I go first.'

And with that he took off.

'One Gryffindor and three Slytherins: this is too easy,' laughed Harry.

'We'll see,' said Henoc, who was next to take off.

'Good luck, Harry,' said Ilaria, who slid onto her broom next.

'See you up there,' said Harry. He stood alone in the wood for an instant before mounting his broom and disappearing into the night sky.

The moon had a swollen, yellowish tint about it. The wind was cold against Harry's cheek and buffeted his hair about as he hovered high above the dark mass of the wood. Far off in the distance and a little to his right he saw the tiny flash of a curse. He made for the direction of the flash, his heart pounding already. Almost immediately someone was on his tail. He heard a girl's voice behind cry out _Stupefy_! It was Ilaria. He blocked the curse without blinking and swooped down about twenty metres, banking sharply to his left. Then he turned suddenly and fired a curse to the place where he knew his adversary must be. After firing the curse, he glanced up and saw Ilaria drop about ten metres, a red letter x now floating over her head.

Another curse flew just past his head, this time from below. Again, Harry dived lower, skimming over the darkened treetops. Something moved fast through the trees and another curse flew towards him. He took immediate evasive action and again the curse narrowly missed. He guided his broom down through the tree canopy and took off in pursuit of his assailant through the trees, branches snapping as he blasted his way through. The branches ripped his sweatshirt, splashes of blood showing through the tears in his sleeves, but he could feel no pain. He sensed only that he was gaining on his adversary. He burst out of the trees into a clearing, then immediately he was back into the forest. Suddenly a curse rebounded into his chest, knocking him backwards. He lost control and plummeted down through the branches, pulling back up just yards from the forest floor. He looked up and caught a glimpse of Henoc higher in the trees. He launched into a wide corkscrew manoeuvre and caught his opponent with a curse launched from an unexpected angle. Harry lingered over his victory for a moment, only to be hit himself in the back by a curse. He looked up to see two red 'x's floating above his head.

'Never let your guard down, Harry,' called out Ilaria as she sped away through the trees. His head pounding with adrenaline and anger, Harry set off in pursuit of her. The two of them broke through the top of the tree canopy. Although Ilaria was a fine flyer, one of Slytherin's best ever chasers, Harry was gaining on her. His curse seemed to explode out of his wand and was on her in a second. She screamed and lost control of her broom, crashing back down into the trees.

Harry maintained his course, now paranoid about pausing even for a second. He sensed that an adversary was near, but nothing could be seen apart from darkness and cloud. The faintest of shadows seemed to move through a cloud off to his left. He took off in pursuit of it. A curse passed just over his head, leaving a smell of scorched hair behind it.

'Over here, Harry'. Harry heard a voice coming from somewhere in front of him. The clouds parted and he could see Caius, hovering some one hundred feet away. Then Caius took off, heading straight for Harry, firing a flurry of curses. _Finally, this is more like it_. Harry followed suit, sending a series of caustic curses back towards Caius. The curses flashed different colours in the dark sky as they exploded against one another. A curious quiet enveloped them as they raced closer, no longer firing curses, instead each inching towards a head-on collision. When they were about ten feet apart each launched his curse, locking the other with his eyes. The curses exploded at close quarters, coalescing into a single flame, generating a blinding light and filling the air with smoke. Then the two wizards crashed into one another. Caius's broom smashed into Harry's shoulder, while his broom collided with Caius's chest. A searing pain shot through Harry's shoulder, then he and Caius were falling, their brooms and bodies tangled. Impact with the tree canopy tore them apart and they fell spinning in different directions through the trees. Finally Harry regained control of his broom and raced towards the still falling Caius. Realising that his adversary was unconscious, Harry fired a spell through the trees, halting his fall just before the ground. At last, he felt his body racked with pain. He felt on fire, but at the same time deflated. He flew the remaining few feet to the ground and dismounted.

Ilaria and Henoc arrived shortly afterwards, dismounting before the still unconscious Caius, who was now lying on the ground. Ilaria kneeled beside him and cradled his head in her hands.

Henoc turned to Harry.

'Well, that's the end of this evening's games.'

Harry nodded. Through the quiet of the forest, Ilaria cast a series of healing charms in an undertone. Caius quickly raised his head. He looked up at Ilaria, and then craned his head round at Harry and grinned, a trickle of blood running down his chin.

'That's the spirit, Harry!'

Harry smiled.

Laughing and joking, the four of them returned to the clearing, with Harry and Henoc carrying Caius between them.

'It doesn't matter there wasn't a clear winner,' Henoc was saying, 'but you and Caius get extra points for your death dive there.'

'Not to mention actually swatting each other with our brooms,' added Caius.

'I think Ilaria deserves a prize for stealth,' said Harry, whose legs were trembling, as if he had drunk too much coffee. 'She's really good at sneaking up on you and hitting you in the back.'

'Sorry Harry, did I spoil your little moment of victory for getting Henoc?' Ilaria had a mischievous look in her eye.

'I think that was the most keenly fought contest yet,' remarked Caius.

Ilaria's eyes darkened. 'Yes, but I have to say that I feel a little responsible. I think my enchantment made you boys a bit too wild.'

'I'm certainly feeling right now like I could beat about ten people in a fight,' said Henoc. Harry said nothing, but he knew what he meant.

Ilaria looked thoughtful.

'Maybe it has a more potent effect on men. I only tested it on myself so far.'

'So I guess that makes us your testosterone-fuelled guinea pigs then,' said Harry, smiling.

'Still,' said Caius, whose spirits had not been dampened by his injuries, 'I declare this evening a success. Though I feel in need of a few drinks to numb my battle wounds. You up for it, Harry?'

For the first time that evening, Harry glanced at his watch. It was about 10.30. Harry realised that he hadn't let anyone know his whereabouts that night. _Ginny won't be pleased_.

'I'd love to, but I'm going to have to give it a miss. You know how it is.'

'Of course Harry, that's very considerate of you,' smirked Caius, who was by now back on his feet. 'You will give our regards to Ginny, won't you Harry?' he continued, smirking at Harry. 'Although, I'm not altogether sure she's really got round to trusting people from Slytherin. Not like _you_ have, Harry.'

'Oh she's ok with you,' Harry replied. 'She knows what you did at the Battle of Hogwarts.'

_I don't care what Caius Hanmer did at the Battle of Hogwarts, I still don't like him_. Those had been her words.

'Pleased to hear it,' Caius replied. He turned to the other two. 'Well then, shall we?'

'Until next time, Harry', said Henoc, who shook his hand.

'See you Harry,' said Ilaria. She reached up shyly and gave him a little squeeze and a soft kiss on the cheek.

Harry watched them turning away and head off into the distance, Henoc and Ilaria helping Caius to walk. Their raised voices and laughter carried through the night even after they had disappeared from sight.

Harry looked again at his watch, cursed under his breath and started to walk after them.


	2. The last of Harry Potter - Chapter 2

2\. Cardinalius

The four wizards apparated just below the brow of a steep hill. Harry looked out into the darkness and could see only twinkling lights climbing the far side of the valley. What lay below them was unfathomable in the night. The wizards slowly made their way up the remaining heights of the hill, with more than one foot slipping on the wet grass. They hauled each other up onto the flat land at the top of the hill, only to find their way blocked by wrought-iron railings running from left to right in front of them. Beyond the railings was a steep, narrow street ascending the hill in terraces, lined with rows of stone houses with slate roofs, glistening under the streetlights from a recent downpour.

'Where are we?' said Harry.

Caius pulled his wand out from his jacket and discretely cast an enchantment. A little gate appeared in the railings. Caius pushed on the gate and it swung open. He turned to Harry and smiled, his face pale under the streetlight.

'Home, for the time being.'

Caius opened the door of a terraced house and the wizards stepped into a narrow hallway. The living room door was ajar, and the flickering light from a television illuminated the walls of the hall and stairs, which were covered with ancient-looking wallpaper. The television set was turned up loud, and what sounded like a late night talk show was blaring out of the speakers.

'Uncle Glynn?' Caius shouted through the door. 'It's me. I brought a few friends round. We're going upstairs'

'Just as you wish,' came a booming voice over the din of the television.

They did their best to arrange themselves around Caius' cramped bedroom. Henoc and Caius sat on the bed, while Ilaria and Harry sat cross-legged on the floor. The room was decorated with equally ancient wallpaper and an oil painting of a cocker spaniel hung over the bed.

'Your dog?' asked Harry, gesturing at the painting.

'The General,' replied Caius.

'The General?'

'He was my grandfather's dog. Lysander Hanmer, Lysander the Drygue. Head of the Coven of the White Tooth. His painting is downstairs in the living room.'

Harry looked at him blankly. Caius tutted.

'You don't know your wizarding history very well, Harry,' he remarked.

Harry smiled in spite of himself. _How many times has Hermione told me that?_

'What is the Coven of the White Tooth then?' asked Harry.

'You'll just have to go and look it up in a library.' Caius had jumped to his feet and was stalking the cramped bedroom with an air of mock pomposity. 'I fear I couldn't do something as illustrious as the Coven of the White Tooth justice.'

'The Coven of the White Tooth was founded by Lysander Hanmer in nineteen err … twenty …' began Ilaria in a bored voice, as if reciting a story she had heard many times.

'1928,' Caius chipped in solemnly.

'1928,' Ilaria continued, 'after a wizard was murdered by a mob in a village in … Cheshire I think, wasn't it?' She turned to Caius, who was listening with some satisfaction.

'Quite right Ilaria, thank you,' he replied. 'See Harry,' he continued, 'over time there've been lapses in the protection of the wizarding world.'

'I know,' replied Harry.

Wiping the minds of Muggles who inadvertently witnessed magic was not always easy. Sometimes people were missed. Such people quite understandably became firm believers in the existence of magic. Some liked the idea. Others abhorred it.

'Back in my grandfather's day,' Caius continued, 'one slip and the villagers were at your door, pitchforks at the ready. So after the Farndon lynching, my grandfather set up a Killk, to protect wizards in his local area.

'A what?' said Harry.

'A Killk. A coven,' Caius replied. 'Like a sort of little wizarding militia. They operated locally at first, but after a while they were getting called out all over the country.'

'And what happened to this Coven?' asked Harry. He didn't remember hearing of it at school or afterwards at the Ministry. _Hermione would know though_.

'The Ministry improved its protection of wizards, so there was no longer a need to call on my grandfather,' replied Caius. 'Still, if all of a sudden the Ministry was able to offer such top-rate protection spells, you have to wonder why they hadn't done a better job until then.'

'Caius thinks the Ministry felt threatened by the Coven, so they were forced to offer better protection,' added Henoc.

'That's exactly what did happen,' retorted Caius.

'If it was that important,' Harry commented, 'you'd think it would be better known.'

'Yeah, like the Ministry is going to advertise its own past shortcomings,' Caius replied.

Harry decided that he would definitely ask Hermione. She hadn't even seemed to judge him for hanging out with Slytherins.

'So what happened to the Coven after that?'

Caius seemed more serious, for once.

'It became more like a society that met at my grandfather's house, studying wizarding heraldry and preserving ancient incantations that were being forgotten.'

_They sound like Sirius's family_.

'But eventually they stopped meeting,' he continued. 'The original members started to die, and not many new ones joined. My father wasn't interested, for one.'

'Did it stop meeting when your grandfather died?' asked Ilaria in a hushed voice.

'It had already stopped by then,' Caius replied, seemingly not wanting to add anything more on the subject.

A few moments of silence passed in the cramped bedroom.

'So is your uncle a wizard?' asked Harry, partially changing the subject.

'Squib,' Caius replied nonchalantly, his sombre tone gone. 'He keeps a spare room for me here, which is ready anytime I get tired of London and I don't feel like going back to my parents.'

'What's the problem with your parents?' asked Harry.

'Oh nothing in particular,' Caius replied. 'It's just that whenever I go back, they're on me in two seconds, pestering me to do something with my life.'

Harry wasn't sure exactly what it was that Caius did with his life. Nor Henoc and Ilaria, for that matter.

'But enough of my biography,' Caius said with a flourish. 'Who fancies a drink?' He drew his wand from his pocket, and with a little swish, produced a tall glass bottle containing a black liquid, which floated in the air between them.

'Dementico?' asked Ilaria.

'It is indeed,' said Caius, who grabbed the bottle out of the air and uncorked it. 'Also known as green horse juice. A few mouthfuls of this and you'll be doing well if you remember who you are tomorrow morning.'

'Doesn't look very green to me,' remarked Harry.

'It's so called because it might cause you to see green horses on the walls,' replied Henoc by way of explanation.

'More of that later,' Caius exclaimed, once again producing his wand from his pocket. This time he conjured a small, oval object that rotated silently in mid-air. The object, made of highly polished wood and covered in intricate carvings, comprised two interlocking and calibrated pieces that fitted together. As the object rotated, the two interlocking pieces themselves turned, but in different directions. Mounted on the top of the object was what looked like a tiny gargoyle made of wrought iron. The gargoyle had staring eyes and seemed to be sticking out its long tongue, which took the form of an arrowhead.

'We could just pass the bottle around, but to liven things up a little, this Cardinalius here will choose the order in which we drink, based on certain criteria.'

'What criteria?' asked Harry, who had never come across the object before.

'The Cardinalius ranks objects, or people, according to its reading of certain aspects of their personality', explained Henoc. 'For example, it selects a category, let's say selfishness for example, and ranks those present according to how selfish they are. Then it swivels round and points to the one who's the most selfish.'

'And the lucky winner gets to take a swig from the bottle,' said Caius.

'How do we know what characteristic we're being ranked by?' asked Harry.

'Look over here, Harry,' said Ilaria, pointing to a tiny plate made of what looked like ivory, mounted on the Cardinalius. 'There's a little dial, which clicks round and indicates the characteristic that has been chosen. There are dozens.'

'How come I never heard of this object before?'

'Being such a subtle piece of machinery, it's pretty rare and expensive. Slytherin people know about it because there's one sitting in a glass cabinet in the Slytherin common room. When you get to year six you can get it out and use it, with the permission of the Head of the House.'

Harry smirked at Ilaria.

'Professor Snape let you use it?'

She smirked back.

'Of course. He used it himself sometimes.'

'Is that right? And Professor Snape used to brew up the odd bottle of Dementico himself too, I suppose?' he remarked.

Ilaria smiled back at him with an air of mock innocence.

'He was known to take the odd swig of it now and then.'

'Really,' said Harry doubtfully, trying to picture Professor Snape in a state of discrete inebriation after a tipple during a quiet moment alone in the Slytherin common room.

'Somehow it sounds just like the kind of object that you would find in the Slytherin common room,' he continued drily.

Caius sat down in front of him and looked him straight in the eye.

'Harry, tonight we will initiate you in the ways of Slytherin house.'

Everyone laughed loudly at this. Caius clapped his hands.

'Enough talking! Let's wind up the mechanism.' He clicked his fingers and the Cardinalius started to wind itself up in mid-air, clicking as it went. Finally the clicking stopped and the Cardinalius stood still, hovering patiently. A little bell could be heard, and the dial whirled around, revealing the selected category.

_Infatuation_.

'Ah, an interesting start,' said Caius. 'Let's see which of us is the most infatuated. Shame the Cardinalius can't tell us the object of that person's affection. If there's a tie, both people selected have to drink.'

Once again the Cardinalius began to rotate, this time making a low whirring noise. Harry could make out a little pointer spinning around. After a few seconds, it stopped in mid-air, with the arrow pointing at Ilaria. The boys all roared with laughter and Ilaria blushed. Ruefully she grabbed the bottle of Dementico out of the air and took a long swig, throwing back her head theatrically. She let go of the bottle, wiping a little trickle of black liquid from her lips. Everyone applauded.

The Cardinalius began to wind itself up again.

_Might_.

The little object set itself in motion, rotating until it settled on Henoc.

Henoc gave himself a discrete cheer of self-approval under his breath and gave a little wave of acknowledgement to the gathered company. He seized the bottle and took a vigorous swig from it.

The Cardinalius went back into operation. Everyone listened closely for the bell.

_Timidity._

Again it whirred around and around, until the pointer selected Caius. Everyone fell about laughing, except Caius, who looked a little taken aback. Then his face broke out into a grin and he drank deeply.

'Again!' he shouted.

This time the Cardinalius wound itself up more deliberately, taking a longer time to make its selection.

_Disenchantment_.

The Cardinalius spun into action, rotating rapidly as it flew past each of the four wizards in turn, over and over again. Then it began to slow, fixing finally on Harry.

He couldn't help feeling a little uncomfortable. The others laughed and Ilaria cast him a knowing look that he pretended not to notice.

'Disenchanted with what?' he asked quietly.

'You tell us, Harry,' said Henoc.

'I'm the last person with anything to complain about,' Harry retorted.

'Your life must almost be perfect, then,' Ilaria remarked, her eyes probing him for a reaction.

'I wouldn't say that,' he replied, as nonchalantly as possible.

'Time to take your medicine, Harry,' said Caius. 'You may even feel less disenchanted.'

Harry reached for the bottle. It was warm in his hand. He raised it to his lips and took a long mouthful. The drink was thick and sweet, tasting something like distilled marzipan, and burned his throat on the way down. He stared at the threadbare brown carpet he was sitting on, his head spinning.

'See any green horses yet?' Through the dizziness he heard Henoc's voice not far from him.

He sat up and looked around. The three Slytherin wizards were all grinning at him, and Caius was waiting to set the Cardinalius back in motion. They made a charming trio, crammed onto the floor of Uncle Glynn's spare bedroom, slightly intoxicated and grinning beneath the painting of the proud General.

They continued for a second round. The Cardinalius selected Henoc for _vanity_ and Caius for _indolence_. Then it selected Ilaria and Harry jointly for _nostalgia_. Once again Harry seized the black bottle from the air and took another long mouthful. Once again the drink scoured his throat on its way down. He wiped a remainder of the sticky black liquid from his mouth. His head reeled and he leaned his back against the wall behind him. He closed his eyes and the sensation of dizziness intensified. Then suddenly the sensation lifted and Harry heard a woman's voice speaking faintly in his ear.

'What a beautiful, sad boy… How I'd love to know your name.'

At first he was silent. The strange voice didn't repeat its wish to know his name, but he couldn't help stammering out 'Harry Potter,' in reply anyway. A peal of laughter erupted around him. He opened his eyes. It was just Caius and Henoc.

'I see you're having trouble remembering who you are already, Harry,' said Caius with a smirk.

Harry swayed to his feet, Ilaria following him with her eyes as he did so.

'I'm just going outside for a bit,' he began hesitantly. 'To get some air.'

He walked out of the bedroom and down the narrow staircase. The television was still blaring from the front room as he came down into the hall. This time he headed not for the front door but towards the back of the house. He passed through a darkened kitchen, turned the key in the back door and went out into the backyard.

The yard was about twenty feet long and mostly paved over. In one corner stood a dilapidated shed. A pair of bicycles were propped up against the back wall and the entire space was scattered with packing crates. To one side of the yard was a small, overgrown lawn. Harry stepped onto the grass and sank to his knees. The night air was cool and his head felt clearer, but his legs buckled under him and almost immediately he dropped down onto the damp grass.

He lay on his back, the grass brushing against the nape of his neck, and looked up into the dark sky. The clouds had lifted in one sector of the sky, uncovering a bank of stars, which pulled in his gaze. His eyelids began to droop and he felt himself slowly slipping unconscious.

Suddenly he found himself looking out to sea from the edge of a low hill. Below him the hill descended a short distance to a pebble beach. The sky was overcast and the sea a disconsolate grey-green. A breeze had got up, and the sea writhed and turned in on itself, as wave after wave broke against the beach, then withdrew with a hissing sound. He looked along the line that divided the land from the water, which curved round to form a bay. The bay ended in a low headland, and just beyond it lay a small, rugged island. He felt a great longing to step off the mainland and onto the island. Although the island lay at least fifty feet offshore, Harry felt confident that all it needed was a determined footstep and he would reach it.

The island seemed quite desolate. Low, shattered cliffs rose above and hemmed in a narrow pebble beach, and above them the island spread away into the distance, covered with nothing more than a blanket of gorse. The wind whipped around him and down below the sea continued to churn and writhe, but on the island nothing stirred.

He stretched out his leg and straight away brought it down on the other side of the water, on a patch of bare earth high above the shore. He steadied himself and climbed the remaining few feet to the summit of the island. From there he could see the rest of the island quite easily: it ran in undulating, gorse-covered mounds and hillocks to the sea on the far side, covering no more than a few square miles in total. In the air all around him he could smell rosemary. The place seemed quite uninhabited. This suited him. He looked back for an instant: the mainland behind seemed dull and distant. He sat down just to the side of a tangled, overhanging bush and looked up to the sky, revelling in the stillness.

Feeling a warm wind start to blow in the air around him, he scrambled to his feet. Standing before him was a tall, black-haired woman with strange green eyes. She wore black robes that seemed to glisten and swirl as if somehow alive. She smiled at him.

'Harry Potter,' she said, 'Welcome to your domain. Do with it what you wish.'

'I have big plans for this place as it happens,' he replied.

'I'm sure you do.'

'By the way,' said Harry. 'No offence, but what are you doing on my island?'

The woman looked at him serenely.

'Oh I won't stay long,' She glanced about her. 'What a beautiful spot,' she added. 'And so peaceful. If this was mine I'd never want to leave it.'

Harry followed her gaze over the sides of the island and out into the churning grey sea that surrounded it. _She's right. It's the perfect place to shut out the world._

'Here no one will bother you,' said the woman.

'That sounds good,' he said.

'And you won't have to worry about trying to be who they want you to be.'

'So much the better.'

'And all those bad memories will be left behind on the mainland.'

'What about the good memories?'

She smiled.

'Whatever you want to reach you here will reach you. Whatever you want to keep away will not pass the sea.'

He took a deep breath. He felt more relaxed already. Then he reached into his pocket for his wand. Fortunately it was where it was supposed to be.

'Well then,' he said. 'I should be getting started.'

The woman nodded and smiled, bowing her head slightly.

'Goodbye, Harry Potter,' she said, and then she was gone.

An unknown length of time passed, during which Harry busied himself with the transformation of his island. Now the waves broke on sandy beaches, and beyond them dunes rose in shimmering lines to the sea of tall grasses he caused to grow in place of gorse and bracken, swaying in the steady breezes that enveloped the island. Here and there little copses of trees provided shelter. In one of them, near to the island's centre, a spring began to gush from the rock and flow in a little stream down to the sea. There, by the spring, he would lie in the grass beneath the branches of the stunted trees and listen to the sound of the water.

More time seemed to pass. Suddenly he became enraged at what he found around him. He took out the wand and began to stalk the island, setting everything before him ablaze. The fires raged on all sides of the island until he tired and he sat on the beach until they went out. Then he walked about the smouldering ruins of all that lived on the island and set about cultivating it anew. And the dunes rose higher, and the grass more luxuriant, the trees grew broader and taller and their foliage denser.

For a long time he remained alone. One day after walking the island, he returned to the copse, only to find a young woman kneeling before the spring. She was pale and thin, with long blonde hair and blue-grey eyes, and wore a long dress of brocaded silk that shimmered silver in the shade of the copse. She looked up at him and smiled.

'Forgive this intrusion.'

She spoke with the voice of Hermione.

'I've been waiting for you to return, to ask your permission to drink from this spring, to quench my thirst. I am so thirsty.'

'Please drink,' he said, 'but first, if you don't mind my asking, how did you get here?'

'I came from the land behind you,' she said, and just beyond her shoulder in the distance he saw the towers of a city. 'I was walking in the wood in the early morning, when a rider on horseback came galloping towards me through the trees. The rider told me that the wood I was walking in was a private hunting ground, and that the lord of the manor and his hounds and riders were even now bearing down on this very spot. He warned me that the lord of the manor took whatever living thing he found in the wood for game and would be sure to hunt me down. I thanked the rider, and he raced away. Straight away I turned and began to flee, but soon I heard horses and dogs behind me. They pursued me relentlessly. Before they could reach me I ran out of the wood and found myself at the water's edge. Rather than face them – I never caught sight of their faces – I jumped into the sea and swam away. The first land I came upon was your island. So here I am. Does this answer please you? May I drink from the spring?'

'Please,' he said and gestured for her to drink.

She lowered her head to the stream and cupped her hands to gather some water. She began to drink, but as she did so, blood began to pour from her chest. Harry walked up to her and touched her arm.

'You're hurt,' he said, pointing to the wound in her chest.

'One of the hunters' arrows pierced me,' she said. She raised her hand to her chest and pulled a long arrow from the wound there. The flow of blood stopped. She held the arrow up to him.

'See what cruel weapons they use: this arrow is wrapped in barbed wire.'

He looked at the arrow, and so it was. She handed him the arrow, then knelt again to drink. Again as she drank, blood began to course once again from the wound in her chest. She drank deeply, and then lay down by the side of the stream, her dress now completely soaked with blood. Harry knelt down beside her.

'Is there anything I can do for you?'

'No,' she said in a quiet voice, 'I don't feel so thirsty now. May I rest here in the shade?'

'You seem very weak,' he said, taking out his wand. 'I could cast a healing spell. I'm quite good at magic. I'm sure I could help you.'

'There's no need,' she replied, 'I've trespassed here too much already. But if you don't mind, I'll just lay here with my hand in the stream, so the water can rush over it.'

She stretched her pale hand into the water, and turned away from him on her side. Her eyes were closed, the grass beneath her smeared with blood. He tried to rouse her. She made no movement but her eyes flickered open.

'You want to be alone,' she said. 'This is your place of solace.'

Her face suddenly turned an even paler, sicklier shade and her eyes ceased to focus on him.

'No, you can stay here,' he replied, more and more worried.

'I can't,' she replied. 'This way isn't open to me. The darkness has closed it.'

She was gone from beside the spring.

'Come back!' he cried. 'Hermione, is that you?'

'She's not here,' came another voice.

The island had vanished. Harry opened his eyes. He was sprawled on the grass in the backyard under the night sky. Ilaria was looking over him, concern in her eyes.

'Harry, are you feeling ok? The Dementico seems to have had a bad effect on you.'

'I'm fine,' he said in a strangled voice, his throat seemingly still full of the viscous liquid.

'Can you get up?' she asked, offering her hand to help him.

'I'm fine,' he mumbled again, but took her hand anyway and pulled himself to his feet.

They stood in the yard looking at each other for a minute.

'I had some weird sort of dream, or hallucination,' said Harry. 'Is that normal?'

'It can happen,' said Ilaria, touching his arm as if to steady him. 'Do you want to come back inside?'

Harry looked around, and then down at his watch.

'I'd better go home,' he said finally.

She looked disappointed

'You know best, Harry.'

'Tell Caius and Henoc I'm sorry,' said Harry. 'Contrary to appearances, I can hold my drink. Don't let them make fun of me too much.'

'Don't worry, I'll put in a good word for you,' she said, smiling.

'I'll see you around,' said Harry.

'Bye Harry,' she said, and kissed him impetuously on the cheek. _That's the second time she's kissed me this evening._ He waved to her and then disapparated.


	3. The last of Harry Potter - Chapter 3

3\. The madness of Harry Potter

Harry apparated in a small, neatly manicured square. He staggered on his feet a little and stood still on the grass for a few moments to steady himself. Almost immediately he was hit by a wave of nausea. He dropped to his knees and vomited into the grass. He remained there for a few minutes doubled over, his eyes shut. He felt light-headed, as if his brain had shrivelled, but the nausea had passed. Finally he stood up and looked up at the building where he and Ginny had been living for the past six months. They had decided to close up Grimmauld Place after Kreacher died. The atmosphere wasn't quite right there anymore and the house was too big for the two of them anyway. A foundation set up to help families decimated by the Death Eaters now occupied the house, although they still had access to the top floor, where they had stored some old furniture and other belongings they felt shouldn't be taken out of Grimmauld Place or which wouldn't fit in their current flat (resizing charms had a habit of running out after a while, with disastrous consequences). Harry didn't rule out the possibility of going back there in the future, but not for the present, or any time soon.

Looking up to the third floor, he could see that the light in their living room was off: Ginny must have retreated to their bedroom. Disposing of his broom, he fumbled in his pocket for his front door key. Muggles lived in his building and in the other buildings around the square, so it made sense to keep a regular, non-magical key. He quite liked living among Muggles who weren't the Dursleys. Having located the key, he blankly turned it in the lock, entered the communal entrance hall of the building and trudged up the stairs. The flat was indeed far smaller than Grimmauld Place, with just a living room, one bedroom, a kitchen and a bathroom, but it was only really intended as a stopgap.

The living room of their flat was dark and silent. He went into the kitchen without any particular goal. He turned on the light, took a couple of turns around the kitchen and then opened a cupboard door at random, only to shut it almost as soon as he had opened it. He went back into the hall and saw a line of light beneath their bedroom door. He felt light-headed and tense. He pushed upon the door and went in.

Ginny was lying on the bed, in a dark hooded sweatshirt and dark leggings. She looked up from her book and said nothing. Her face was pale but betrayed no expression. He stood in front of the bed and folded his arms. He found that he had no intention of speaking first.

'All bloodied up again, Harry,' she said in a low voice. 'I suppose you were waylaid by some dark wizards on the way home.'

He bowed his head slightly, in a vague attempt at seeming contrite.

'I know, I should have let you know I was going to be late.'

She assessed him coolly as he spoke.

'One of the more useful things Muggles have come up with, mobile phones, you know …'

He went and sat on the edge of the bed.

'Ginny,' he said, stretching his hand across the bed until it was a few centimetres from her outstretched leg. 'I'm sorry.'

She pulled herself a little closer to him then recoiled violently.

'Is that the charming fragrance of vomit?' she said, her voice much louder. She pulled away from him until she was leaning against the headboard. 'By the way, you'll be sleeping somewhere else this evening.'

He shifted off the bed and stood up again.

'I'm sorry,' he said again. 'I'm really sorry. What more can I say?'

She looked down at the book she was clutching in her hand, before reaching over to the nightstand and carefully putting it down. She looked up at him again, her lips drawn tight and her brow creased. Her eyes seemed to study him, trying to work out what on earth he thought he was doing.

'So you're not even going to tell me where you were tonight.'

'I was just about to.'

She folded her arms.

'Don't bother. You were out with your little Slytherin friends. You only ever go awol when you're out playing with them. That's where you were, isn't that right?'

He sighed in spite of himself.

'Yes,' he replied in a neutral sort of a voice, not sure whether to strike a note of regret or defiance.

'Why are you hanging around with these people? They're barely out of Hogwarts for a start. Why don't you hang around with people your own age anymore?'

Defiance was starting to win out.

'Are we really having this conversation?' he replied, raising his voice too. 'Do you really think there's something wrong with them? Who cares if they're from Slytherin? They're all right. And they were against Voldemort. Besides, Severus Snape was the head of Slytherin.'

'Severus Snape has nothing to do with this.' She paused and began again in a more composed voice. 'Anyway, I agree that not everyone from Slytherin is bad. Henoc Lutumba is ok, but that Caius Hanmer is totally suspect. And don't even get me started on Ilaria.'

'What have you got against her?' He noticed he was starting to shake.

'What have I got against her? Well for a start she's so obviously after you. Always so interested in what you have to say, appearing to have all the same interests as you. Always looking at you with such a conspiratorial air. Oh yeah, you're such good mates.'

She had a point about Ilaria. But he had no desire to agree with her. He almost found himself wishing he was in Ilaria's company. He couldn't even imagine her arguing with someone.

'I see, so all of a sudden I'm not allowed to have female friends.'

This drew a sarcastic smirk from Ginny, but she said nothing.

'This is incredible, coming from someone with as many male friends as you. I better not talk to Hermione anymore either.'

Her eyes narrowed.

'Oh I wouldn't want to deprive you of your _best friend_, Harry.'

Her tone took him by surprise.

'Why the sarcasm?' he asked, trying unsuccessfully to appear calm. 'What can you possibly have against Hermione?'

'I have nothing against her as a person,' she replied. 'I've always liked her and I've always seen her as a friend. I know she doesn't want to hurt me or my brother. But when it comes to you she can't help herself. She only puts her foot in it over you, let's say, about once a week on average.'

He folded his arms, his hands gripping his elbows tightly.

'What do you mean _puts her foot in it_?'

'Gets on my territory.'

'I'm your territory, am I?'

A look of fury shot across her face.

'Yes, Harry Potter, of course you are!'

'Well then,' he replied, 'you'd better give me some examples of Hermione's transgressions.'

She shot him a caustic, hostile smile.

'Where to start, Harry? The lingering embraces, the significant glances across the room, and the friendly advice, especially the advice! Imagine: Hermione giving _me_ advice about _you_! _You know Ginny, Harry's like this, Harry thinks that, don't forget what Harry's been through, Harry finds it hard to adjust to normal life now the war's over. You know Ginny, Harry died and came back from the dead!'_

'She wasn't really supposed to …' Harry began.

'Wasn't supposed to what?' Ginny retorted. 'Wasn't supposed to pass on to me what you obviously confide to her? She means well, I know she does, but she needs to get over herself about you. And by the way, thanks for confiding in her and not in me.'

He felt himself swelling with rage. He dropped his hands to his sides and took several steps closer to her. He was now leaning over the bed and visibly shaking.

'Hermione risked her life a thousand times for me. Hermione was the only one who …'

Ginny leapt to her feet and shoved Harry, pushing him away from the bed.

'Who did what, Harry? Didn't I risk my life for you too? Didn't I, Harry?'

They stared at each other in the dimly lit bedroom. He couldn't say anything.

'You know what, Harry Potter? I think you wish you were back in those times. You wish you were still being hunted. You wish Voldemort was back so you could fight him again.'

'It's not true,' he began in reply. _But what is it then?_ 'I just have these strange …'

'Strange what? Strange desires to fly your broom out in the middle of nowhere, exchanging curses with the remnants of last year's Slytherin quidditch team. What's next Harry, a duelling club with Draco Malfoy?'

'It's just a bit of harmless …'

'Harmless fun? To enliven the boredom of living with me?'

'I never said …'

'When are you going to realise that the world is safer and more boring now? You and I are safe. Our lives are boring, if being boring means not spending each day in fear of being murdered. When are you going to grow up, Harry Potter? When are you going to stop wishing yourself back in 'the darkness', as you and Hermione like to call it? I can see how much it meant to you being the outlaw, with your faithful Hermione by your side.'

_How is this happening? How can this even be an issue? How can Hermione be a threat?_

'You know something, Ginny,' Harry continued, no longer able to control how loud he was shouting, 'you claim to know me so well, but this is one thing you just don't get, and I'm starting to think you never will. If you're jealous of Hermione, you're insane, you're worse than Ron, because he at least had the excuse of being under the influence of a Horcrux when he had his little fit of jealousy.'

'Yeah that's right, Harry, it's a silly little fit of jealousy, and I'm a silly little hysterical woman. Not like Hermione.'

_That's right. She's not like you._

'Understand this: there are some things that Hermione gets much better than you. You don't know what it's like to be completely isolated and hunted for month after month, living in the middle of nowhere, scavenging for food. You don't know what it's like to be abandoned by those closest to you, including your brother, by the way. You weren't there when I saw my parents' grave for the first time and the house where they were murdered. You weren't the last person still standing by my side. Hermione is the one person who has never given up on me, ever. It's as simple as that, no ulterior motive, no subliminal meaning.'

Harry stopped to catch his breath, which was on the verge of hyperventilation. His vision blurred, and he found it difficult to focus on Ginny, who was standing no more than a few inches away from him, visibly seething with anger.

'Do you have any idea how painful it is for me when you make me second best to her? Or when she presumes to think she knows you better than me? But I suppose she can't help herself, so maybe I should let her off. And what's more, she's so blind she can't see what it does to Ron. In fact, I think she actually congratulates herself on her restraint! With or without a Horcrux hanging round my neck I can see things very clearly. And I see it's hopeless trying to prise you away from your _best friend_. My father still has that tent, Harry. I suggest you take Hermione camping and the two of you can do whatever it is you do in the darkness.'

Something inside him snapped and Harry reached out and shoved Ginny hard in the shoulders, slamming her backwards onto the bed. He reached down over her, locked his hands around her neck and started to squeeze. Ginny screamed, but the scream was suddenly choked off. Suddenly realising what he was doing, He looked into her eyes and released his grip. She immediately raised her hands and pushed him away violently. Deflating fast, he fell to his knees in front of the bed. The feeling of total defeat that had flooded his body steadily gave way to disgust. He was unable to speak. He gazed up at Ginny with a look that was part vacant, part pleading. She looked back at him for a moment. It was perhaps the fiercest look anyone had ever given him in his life. But no hex followed: the next moment Ginny disapparated from their bedroom.

He slid to the floor and stretched himself out limply on his side, feeling as if he would be engulfed by the shame that seemed to be seeping out of every pore in his body. He didn't stir from his torpor until a violent tremor rippling down his spine brought him back to his senses. He felt utterly cold, but awake. He mechanically got to his feet and swayed across the room, not knowing where he was going. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror that hung on the wall of their bedroom: his glazed eyes shone too brightly from a face that was sheet white, his hair matted and wet. He couldn't believe that the reflection in the mirror was his. _Tom Riddle is having the last laugh after all._ He took out his wand and pointed it as if he meant to shatter the glass in the mirror. Instead, he turned the wand into his own face. He spoke the incantation clearly and with conviction.

_Obliviate_.

He found himself looking in the mirror at a face he didn't recognise. He looked around and saw that he was in an unfamiliar bedroom, surrounded by someone else's things. He tried to think where he was supposed to be, where the home was that he ought to be in at this hour. But he couldn't remember. Then it occurred to him that he didn't even know what his name was. He looked down at his hand and found he was holding a strange object, a slim, neatly crafted wooden stick. The object seemed to bear within it a memory, a dim memory, but one ridden with shame and reproach. He opened his hand and dropped the object to the floor. He heard the sound of footsteps and indistinct voices on the floor above him. Suddenly filled with panic, he bolted through the open door. He ran through the entrance hall and wrenched open the front door of the apartment. The landing he found himself on was dark. He had no idea where the light switch was, and so he made for where he thought the stairs were, falling over twice as he leapt and slid down the steps.

When he got outside onto the street, the feeling of terror mingled with guilt began to subside. He felt as if he had been trespassing in someone else's life. Now he felt safer, just another stranger on the street. He raised his hand, looked at it and then brought it close to his nose and lips. He could smell a girl's perfume on his hand. A terrible thought seized him and he examined his hands more closely. There were no traces of blood.

Several roads led off the square he was standing in. Tall buildings loomed all around him, and the roads leading away from the square promised unknown dread. The second turning on the left somehow seemed to him the least menacing. He ran across the square and disappeared around the corner.

His heart beating hard and sweat pouring down his back, he kept walking until he noticed that his extremities were growing cold. He came to an unwieldy halt, pins and needles in his legs. There was a light drizzle in the air. Nothing on the streets was familiar. Only the sky seemed a friend to him, illuminated by the glare of the streetlights and decorated by myriad droplets of falling rain.

He set off again until his legs couldn't take any more. Leaning against a low brick wall, he glanced at the suburban street before him, some houses darkened, others with their lights still on. _I have no destination_. He began to realise that he would need shelter and sleep. He walked slowly through a series of streets, passing no one, until he reached a wide expanse of greenery, dotted with trees and crisscrossed with footpaths. He walked onto the grass, relieved to no longer be hemmed in by houses.

In the centre of the park was a small concrete kiosk enclosed by a low concrete wall, with space for picnic tables in summer. He stepped over the wall and walked up to the kiosk, leaning his face against the window to look inside. There was little to be seen, the kiosk seemingly shut up for the coming winter. A rattling noise was coming from behind the building. He went round to the rear and found a window blown ajar by the wind. Easing himself onto the ledge, he slipped through the gap and dropped down inside.

He found himself in a rectangular space taken up mostly by a kitchen, with a desk pushed into one corner and an adjoining toilet. He sat down at the desk and let his head rest on the table. The chair was more comfortable than he had expected, and he began to feel drowsy. Feeling his energy failing, he got up, closed the window and performed a brief search of the kitchen. Most of the cupboards were locked, but in one he found a striped tablecloth. He lay the tablecloth on the floor by the side of the desk and lay down on it, pulling the tablecloth around him like a shroud. Pleased with his sleeping arrangements, he looked up into the semi-dark and absentmindedly read the health and safety instructions pinned to the wall above the desk. He realised that he still felt exposed, so he shifted his position until his head and shoulders were under the desk. _I'll know what to do in the morning_. Then sleep overcame him.


	4. The last of Harry Potter - Chapter 4

4\. Separation

The afternoon heat had burnt itself out and the light was just beginning to fade.

The girl took a drag from her cigarette and elegantly exhaled the smoke. She leaned back in the grass, glanced casually over at the boy sitting just across from her and shot him a fleeting, but brilliant smile. The sun was low in the sky and shining right in his eyes, so he had to screw them up to return her gaze. He shifted his position a little so that his eyes were sheltered by the ancient stone wall at their backs.

It had been her idea that they walk down to the castle. He had agreed of course: this was Iona Deasy after all, actually suggesting they take a walk together. By some stroke of luck he had decided to go to the library that lunchtime to finally get started on his summer homework. He had been there over an hour, bent over a geography assignment, when he heard a girl's voice calling to him softly from across the table.

_Simon?_

He had recognised her voice, but when he looked up he couldn't quite believe she was standing there, smiling at him and swinging her book bag down onto the table, exuding an air of languid tranquillity. He didn't remember her ever calling him by his first name before.

_Anyone sitting there_?

He had started to get up from his seat, pulling scattered papers back onto his portion of the table.

_No, of course not_.

She had piercing grey eyes and pale blonde hair that hung loosely down to her shoulders. Her cheeks were pink from where the sun had caught them. Her mouth slipped effortlessly into a smile, a sincere smile he thought. She wore a black and white striped t-shirt, denim shorts cut off at the knees and rather flimsy sandals. An entire summer had not been enough to tan her pale skin.

Back in the library they had started by bemoaning the fact that there was only one week left of the summer holidays; then, in low, conspiratorial voices, they had gone on to comparing what assignments they had. They were in the same classes for a few things. _I can't believe Miss Catchpole set us so much homework._ _I know._ _Been anywhere nice on holiday?_ _Just the Norfolk Broads_. She had been in Italy. _Whereabouts? Umbria_. Her family had rented a villa there. _We never go anywhere like that._

She stubbed out her cigarette against a gnarled piece of ancient wall. He had already put his out in the grass a couple of minutes earlier. The taste of the cigarette was still bitter in his mouth: it was the ninth cigarette he had ever smoked but it wasn't getting any more pleasant. At least he hadn't coughed.

_Me and Claire were supposed to be meeting here today to do homework_, _but she had to go and visit her aunt_. So he had Claire Hale's aunt to thank for this piece of luck. Iona and Claire were both on the list of 'fit' girls that the boys in their year would sit around at break times talking about, trying to assume an air of raffish connoisseurship. Claire Hale regarded all boys in their year with a kind of ethereal contempt; Iona came across as less standoffish, but more shy, and she was somewhat in Claire's shadow, so the boys didn't mention her so much. _Thank goodness_. At least she didn't make you feel she was demeaning herself by speaking to you. Still, he couldn't quite believe that he could speak to her without every other sentence being ruined by some cringe-worthy remark. _What would she say if I told her what I am?_ For a moment he was almost tempted to. But it would sound ridiculous. Without a doubt she would just laugh at him. _Iona, do you believe in magic?_ That was even worse. Definitely not the sort of thing you just slip into the conversation.

He looked up at the wall. It rose unevenly above them, all that remained of a shattered medieval watchtower. He had close-cropped brown hair, mournful blue eyes and eyelashes too long for a boy, so he thought. He wore a checked short-sleeved shirt, sweltering black jeans and trainers. High up the tower was a bare window, blinding white against the dank, shadowed wall. Beyond the ruined tower the ground dropped away suddenly down a steep hill. He wondered who had once looked out of that window over the fields below and the sea beyond.

He had accepted straight away when she suggested that they take a walk. His homework would have to wait. Her house was much nearer the library than his. She had even pointed it out to him as they passed it in the street. A double-fronted detached Victorian house, facing a hedge on the other side of the street. They had continued on down the lane without stopping, past the last few houses and out into farmer's fields that rose and fell on either side of the roadside hedges. The castle lay just a little way out past the boundary of the town, raised up on a grass-covered hill with straggly woodland starting just beyond it. Not much of it was left: jut a single tower half-open to the elements and fragments of wall that were too scant for anyone to complete the castle's lost outline with their imagination.

The gaps in conversation were getting longer and more frequent. Each one was an opportunity to change the subject. _You could do it, you know. You could show her something._ He didn't have his wand with him, but he could make a few things happen without it. He could probably make a little fire dance through the grass or make some kind of writing appear on the old stone wall. There was no way she wouldn't be impressed. And he would swear her to silence, there was no getting round that. But it would be better that way anyway: what a feeling of complicity the secret would create.

'Here puss puss puss.'

Her voice interrupted the silence. When he looked around she was halfway down a little hollow just below where they had been sitting. A silver-white cat crouched in the grass a few feet away down the slope. It looked soberly up at Iona, who was cooing to it softly, her hand outstretched. He got up stiffly and went after her.

The cat made no movement to flee as she approached, and never averted its gaze. When she reached its side it reared up suddenly and lightly brushed its forehead against her leg. Then it sat up and allowed her to stroke it, closing its eyes in pleasure as she rubbed its head.

He came nearer to them, the grass rustling under his feet as he trudged forward. The cat opened its eyes and threw him a rather withering look. It had one blue eye and one green. Then it looked back at Iona with an imploring expression and allowed her to stroke it once more, before suddenly turning and padding down the hill at a determined pace.

Iona glanced round at Simon for a moment then headed after the cat. He hesitated briefly then went after her.

The cat leapt over a small section of wall, little more than a pile of ancient rubble in the grass, and headed out of the precincts of the castle. They followed the animal down a grassy bank to a dry ditch that ran along the bottom of the castle hill. It eased its way down the ditch's pebble-strewn incline to its bottom and scrambled up the other side, scampered through the grass and disappearing into a little copse that now came into sight.

He paused for a moment and caught her arm, holding her back. He let go of her arm almost as soon as he had touched it.

'Should we be following this cat?'

She folded her arms and squinted in the direction of the trees.

'Why, do you think it's leading us into a trap?'

He shrugged.

'I don't know. I just get the feeling that it's deliberately leading us on.'

'I certainly hope so!'

For an instant she looked quizzically at the doubt in his eyes. Then she smiled and gave a little tug on his arm.

'You coming?'

He nodded swiftly and followed her into the copse.

Beyond the initial line of trees was a shaded space. The ground was slightly damp and lined with dead leaves. The cat was a few feet off, nosing through the leaves. Just beyond it lay what looked like an abandoned black sheet. The cat looked up and shot them another penetrating glance.

They approached the cat. Iona crouched beside it and it allowed her to stroke it again. He went over to the dark item on the ground. He poked at it with his foot then crouched down to take a closer look. Instead of smelling of mildew or urine, as he had feared it might, it gave off a pleasant odour faintly reminiscent of myrrh. He picked up the object and opened it out. As soon as he touched it, he knew. _Should I say something to her_? It appeared to be a voluminous black cloak, made of a heavy, rich material. He ran his hand over the cloak until he came to a little badge sewn onto it. He looked more carefully and made out the letter 'H' on the badge. Straight away he folded up the cloak and put it over his arm.

'Simon?'

He liked the way she said his whole name: at school he was usually called _Si_, or sometimes _Sid_. _Simeon_ was his real name, but his parents had done him the favour of altering it slightly when they put him in a muggle school. A pang of fear rippled through him. He found her sifting through the dirt and the dead leaves, trying to extract something embedded in the moist earth. Her delicate fingers closed in around a slender wooden object protruding slightly from the ground. With a little effort she managed to slide it out, holding it in the palm of her hand. It was about ten inches long, made of a smooth, pale wood and intricately carved. It seemed untouched by the time spent in the earth. _It's a real one too_. He could probably wield it, cast some kind of spell, even though something usually went wrong if you tried to use someone else's wand. Iona looked round at him, her eyes wide with fascination.

'Do you think this is a …?'

He found that he couldn't speak. He would be breaking the most important rule he knew. With silent contempt, he reflected how close he had come to showing her earlier. And when they asked him why he did it, he would have to say _to impress a girl_. He screwed up his face.

'Well it certainly looks like one,' he replied.

'Amazing,' she murmured under her breath, examining how the wand looked in the palm of her hand. She even gave it a little swish, as if trying to cast a spell. _Her technique's not bad, as it happens_.

'What do you think?' she said. 'Pretty strange, eh?'

'Very strange,' he said.

'What did you find?' she asked.

'A black cloak.'

'A black cloak? No! This is too interesting. It's as if a wizard came here and abandoned his wand and cloak.'

_She would be impressed after all_. _I could trust her._ The urge to tell her rose up inside him then quickly abated.

'A wizard? Seems a bit far fetched.'

She frowned a little.

'Here, take a look,' she said, suddenly handing him the wand. He took the wand and handed her the cloak, his hand brushing against hers. A shiver ran through him. _This wand has a bad vibe_. He wanted to tell her that they should leave. He glanced down at the cat. It looked at him standing there with the wand in his hand. Something about the cat calmed his nerves.

'Still … it's pretty realistic, don't you think?' she said again.

'It does look sort of … well, like what you would expect it to look like,' he said, turning it over in his hand. 'But do you believe in magic?'

She looked at him with a pensive expression.

'Why not?'

By way of reply she shot him a slightly mocking smile.

'You're a sceptic, are you?'

He didn't want to disagree with her. He had got himself into a mess.

'I wouldn't say I'm a sceptic exactly. But what are the chances?'

He could feel his cheeks burning as he spoke. _But this is what I'm supposed to do_.

'Ok, fair enough,' she said. 'But you never know.'

He smiled.

'No, you never know.'

'And this,' she said, pointing to the wand, 'might be evidence that magic does exist.'

'This could all just be from a costume shop though,' he replied, gesturing vaguely at the cloak and wand.

She rolled her eyes at him.

'Come on,' she said, gesturing to the cat that was purring softly at her feet, 'what about the cat? Isn't it just a little bit tempting to think that this cat was the familiar of a witch or wizard? And that its master or mistress disappeared, leaving their wand and cloak behind.'

He looked down at the cat, and the cat looked up at him with an inscrutable expression.

'Maybe this is the witch or wizard themselves.'

She tutted and gave him a disapproving little shove on the arm. He smiled at her.

'The cat seems to like you,' he said.

'Maybe I could take him home, if he wants to come,' she said, laying the cloak on the ground and kneeling beside the cat. 'Do you want to come home and live with me?' she said, addressing the cat in a childlike voice. Then she looked up at him.

'Do you want the wand?'

He looked at the wand in his hand. Another little tremor passed through him.

'No, you can keep it,' he said, handing it back to her. She accepted the wand with pleasure and slotted it into the pocket of her shorts.

'You can keep the cloak then.'

'Ok,' he replied, and picked up the cloak. _What am I going to do with this_? _Wait for someone to come back and claim it?_ He didn't want it. There was something sad and dreary about it.

They stood in the copse, looking at each other. The fading sun still shone through the branches, casting a diffuse light. Under the trees the air was clammy and it felt cold for such a warm day. Suddenly a little breeze picked up, causing goose bumps to rise on Iona's arms and legs and rippling through the dead leaves. He looked into her eyes. They looked sad, almost fearful. _She feels it too_. Then the air was still again.


	5. The last of Harry Potter - Chapter 5

5\. The threshold

The sky over London was grey and the rain kept falling. The wind had blown his hood down so many times that he had given up putting it back up, so he walked through the rain with his head held high, his hair soaked and sticking to his forehead. He looked blankly at each stranger who passed him on the street. They had nothing for him: they couldn't scold him, they couldn't encourage him, they couldn't call him home.

A little pile of small change growing hot and sweaty in his hand, he pushed open the door of a pub and went inside. The pub was small and dingy, little more than a single room, and seemed genuinely ancient. He was glad to finally get out of the rain, which had been falling incessantly for the past hour and had penetrated him right to the bones. He ordered a pint of bitter from a bored girl serving behind the bar and sat down at an empty table, burrowing deeper into his overcoat in search of warmth. As it was early afternoon, there were few customers in the bar, and so he felt less conspicuous.

He sat staring at the little indentations and scratch marks in the ancient table. Somehow, the thought had got into his head to see if anything had been inscribed there on purpose. All he could find were the words _Tom's a slag_ carved in a corner. He sat back on the chair and reached into his coat. After groping around the inside pockets, he pulled out a piece of white paper. He held it unfolded in his hand for a moment, then opened it and straightened out the creases that had appeared around its edges. The page was almost blank, and contained only one sentence:

_You can tell me anything_.

The message was written in a hand that he could not recognise. The letters were neat and pleasantly shaped. Whenever he looked at them he felt that a girl had written them. He had read the words a thousand times and still he couldn't tell who she was. _Someone who cares about me, anyway_. He touched the words with his index finger as if to mark his place in the text. Then he folded up the note and carefully put it back in his pocket.

Glancing around the bar, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a bag of crisps, which he proceeded to eat as noiselessly as possible. The crisp packet empty on the table and the pint of bitter half drunk, he took out a worn, almost coverless paperback and began to read.

He had been reading for some time when he began to feel that someone was watching him. He read on, but the feeling that someone's eyes were frequently on him continued to intrude, making him lose the train of the arguments in the text he was reading. Finally he felt that someone was standing before him and looked up.

The man standing too close to him had short-cropped blonde hair and keen grey eyes behind dark-rimmed spectacles. He was young and good looking, in expensive looking jeans and a tailored green jacket, which hung open, half-revealing a black Tool t-shirt. The man shot him a brief sort of smile, then stuck out his hand. He looked at the hand for a moment then shook it with little conviction.

'This seat free?' said the man.

He looked around the bar. There were plenty of seats free elsewhere.

'If you like,' he replied.

'Miserable fucking day, eh?' said the man in a friendly manner.

'What do you expect this time of year?' he replied dolefully.

'Fair enough,' said the man, who took a quick glance around him, then put his hands on the table.

He looked blankly at him.

'I saw you out on the street,' the man began, rather in a matter-of-fact way.

_Might as well just have said he saw me in the cafeteria at work_.

'You seem to have fallen on hard times.'

He could swear that there was a hint of a smile on the man's face as he spoke. He decided he didn't care.

'As to whether I've fallen on them or not, I couldn't tell you,' He replied flatly. 'I have no memory of anything else.'

'Is that so?' said the man, 'I could have sworn you used to be much more … illustrious.'

_What is he talking about_?

'Do you know me or something?' he asked.

'I know of you,' said the man, his eyes scrutinising him through the glass of his spectacles. 'Or at least I think I might.'

He was getting a little tired of the man and his riddles.

'Who am I then?' he asked brusquely.

The man exhaled heavily, as if he had been slightly hurt by his tone. He looked him up and down again with his cold eyes.

'Is your name James Black by any chance?' he said finally.

_James Black_. That was the name that had come to him when he had first looked at his reflection in a shop window, when the numbness had begun to subside, when he began to feel like a human being again, not some empty vessel. He didn't know how long he had been waiting for someone to recognise him, to tell him something about him, how he had ended up on the street.

Now someone was sitting in front of him, actually saying that they knew him. But there was no euphoria. He didn't even recognise the bloke. Not in the slightest. And it occurred to him that he didn't even want to recognise him. All of a sudden he wanted to scuttle back into anonymity.

'I told you,' he said. 'I have amnesia.'

The man's face was expressionless, completely unreadable.

'That must be a bummer,' he said at last.

The obvious lack of anything like sympathy was almost refreshing.

'I'm not complaining. I've no fall from grace to regret. I'm just quietly going about my business. Perhaps you should do the same. I have nothing for you. I don't need saving or rehabilitation.'

'Oh, I'm not involved in anything like that,' the man replied, apparently amused at the idea. 'I just want to ask for your help with a task I have to accomplish.'

'My help?'

'That's all, I promise. Straight up, cards on the table, no hidden agenda.'

'And what is it I can do for you then?'

'I want to show you something I think you might be able to help me with. It's not far from here. It's worth a hot meal.'

James Black looked at him.

'Why should I trust you?'

The man peered at him curiously.

'What _has_ happened to you?'

'What are you talking about?'

'It doesn't matter. To be honest, I can't think of any reason why you should trust me. Perhaps you can't help me after all.'

The man stood up as if to leave and offered his hand again. He shook it without much conviction. As the man began to walk away he suddenly felt a pang of regret. _I'm sick of being alone_. He started to stand up in his seat.

'Let me finish my drink first,' he called out. The man stopped, halfway across the bar. He shot him what looked like a rather odd expression, then returned to the table, watching as he downed the rest of his pint.

The rain had left off somewhat and the streets seemed less cold. They made their way along streets thronged with office workers and down lanes lined with a mixture of forgotten old brick buildings and the brutalist backs of glass and concrete office blocks.

They stopped for a moment before an inconspicuous door. The door was unmarked, but swinging by its side was a metal sign that bore the image of a witch and broomstick. The man pointed to the door.

'Know this place?' he said.

'No.'.

'If you say so,' said the man, and they went on quickly, following a circuitous route through a tangle of back streets that seemed to get more dilapidated as they went further on. But James didn't seem to mind. He felt no sense of foreboding. He actually felt sure that he wasn't being led into a trap. There was no sense of being judged like there was when you were walking on your own.

Finally the man led them down a narrow passageway with a high brick wall on one side and a series of boarded up shop fronts on the other. At the end of the alleyway they stopped before a shop that seemed to have remained derelict for years. Above the soot-blackened window the words 'Leftwich and Co' could still be read through the dust. The man peered at the bricked-up doorway to the premises of Leftwich and Co as if he was looking for something. Then he turned to James.

'This is the backdoor,' he said. He took out a little stick and ran it over the pitted bricks. 'They've changed the combination. I knew the old one, but now it's sealed up again. Here, take this.' He gave him the stick and nudged him. 'You try.'

Without thinking James passed the stick over the brick wall in front of him. Nothing happened.

'Try again.'

Again nothing happened. The man looked at him disappointedly. He grabbed him by the sleeve and stared intently into his haggard, unshaven face.

'Can't you sense it?' he demanded. 'We're so close here. Just the other side of the doorway.'

'Sense what?'

They looked at each other. The man let go of James's arm.

'You really can't feel anything,' he said.

They heard footsteps in the alleyway and turned around. A young woman was walking quickly towards them. She had red hair tied up in a severe bun and was fixing them with a harsh, piercing look through steel-rimmed glasses. The girl's red hair had a bad vibe about it: dwelling too long on it would force him onto a rat run in his mind to somewhere he didn't want to go. Not to a memory, such thoughts never led anywhere real. Instead they lead to places of clammy, anonymous fear and panic, the blind traumas of a caged animal.

In her smart, dark green tunic, dark cardigan, black leggings and heeled boots, the girl looked like some sort of City worker. Strange that she should be striding so purposefully towards them down a dark alley, like she was a teacher who'd just caught some boys smoking on school grounds.

'What are you doing here?' she said in a suspicious voice. Up close she looked much younger than she had from down the other end of the alley, barely out of her teens. James glanced down at his hand, wondering how he would explain the fact that he was holding such a ridiculous object. But the stick was gone.

'Sightseeing,' said the man.

'Sightseeing,' the red-haired girl repeated with deadpan irony.

'You know it's fascinating what you can find down the back alleys of London,' the man continued. He pointed at the decrepit brick wall. 'You can walk into an alleyway like this and step back into another era. Even in London there are forgotten places, places that have been abandoned to the passing of time.'

'Is that right?' The red-haired girl glanced at the ancient shop front and then back at them. 'Why don't you just walk in the front door?'

'The front door to what?' The man's tone was slightly mocking.

'Why are you playing games?'

'What do you mean, games?' said the man, a trace of annoyance entering his voice. 'I'm genuinely interested in the history of London. The London that most people have forgotten. Who are _you_ anyway? As far as I know we're not trespassing here.'

A flicker of doubt passed across the girl's face. She looked hard at the man.

'Yes, who are you?' said James, echoing the question. She turned to look at him for the first time, her eyes widening as she did.

'Just someone whose business it is to know when someone comes wandering down here,' she replied coolly, not taking her eyes off him.

'Are you who I think you are?' she said at last.

_Why does everyone seem to know me today? It's sort of annoying when I don't even know myself._

'His name's James Black,' said his companion. Again she looked closely at him. Her eyes were green, a similar shade to his.

'Is that right?' she asked.

'Yeah, that's right.'

Still not taking her eyes off him, the girl reached into her bag, took out a mobile phone and made a call.

'It's me,' she said when a voice answered the phone, 'I'm at Leftwich's. Can you get here quickly?'

'Leftwich's?' said a disembodied male voice at the other end of the line. 'I'll be right there.'

'What's this all about?' said the man. 'This cloak and dagger stuff is getting a bit tiring.'

The red-haired girl said nothing in return.

'If you're from the police or something, you should show us some ID,' said the man.

'Who said I was from the police?'

'In that case, you've got no authority to keep us here.'

'That's true,' said James.

She glanced quickly back down the alleyway. There was no one there.

James Black's companion turned to him.

'Come on, let's go,' he said.

The girl shifted her position so that she was blocking the way out.

'Why don't you stay a bit longer, soak up a bit more history?' she said in a cool, but slightly menacing tone. The man started to push past her but she caught him by the arm. He tried to pull free with a violent wrench of his arm but she didn't let go. Her strength was surprising. She leaned a little towards him, seemingly whispering something under her breath, like she was reciting something to herself. The man tried again to pull himself free. This time the girl stepped away and let him pass. He turned back and looked at James.

'You coming?' he said.

James looked at the red-haired girl, trying not to think about the fact that her hair was red. She looked back at him strangely.

'I don't know what your problem is,' he said finally.

'Don't you?' she said, her eyes wide and doubtful. 'Don't you know what this is all about?'

'Haven't the foggiest,' he replied and walked past her, following his companion back towards the road. She took a step towards him then decided against it at the last minute.

As they reached the end of the alley, another man stepped in front of the entrance, blocking their way out. He was about forty, dressed in a thick grey sweater and dark corduroys. His face was pleasant, but tired and lined, his dark brown hair flecked with grey.

'Not another one,' said James's companion. The newcomer looked at him with a kind of bleak curiosity.

'They're not here by accident,' called out the red-haired girl from the other end of the alleyway.

'What are your names, lads?' said the newcomer.

'None of your business,' said James's companion.

'That one's called James Black apparently,' said the girl, who had now come back to the entrance. 'This one didn't give a name.'

'What's your name?' said the newcomer, eyeing James's companion, a cold and keen expression on his face.

'Joel Green,' came the reply after a few moments' silence.

'Green and Black,' said the older man. 'How complementary.'

'Is that enough information for you?' said the man apparently called Joel Green.

'It'll have to do for now.'

Joel Green looked at James Black then looked at the man in the grey sweater, who stepped aside, leaving the way clear. He seemed to shiver, then walked past the man and out of the alley altogether, without a word.

As the older man scrutinised James, the girl came and whispered something in his ear.

'What do you think?' she said in a lower, but audible voice.

'Looks like him all right,' said the man.

'Are you talking about me?' said James with a hint of defiance.

The man took a step nearer to him, his brow furrowed even deeper. Like the girl before him, he too seemed to whisper something under his breath. He turned his head towards her.

'There's no trace.'

'That's what I thought,' said the girl. 'Scarcely over the line.'

'And Mr Green?'

'Much stronger. He's one all right.'

'Yes, I thought so.'

'What on earth are you talking about?' James exclaimed.

The man looked him up and down again, a quizzical expression on his face.

'Is this all really a complete mystery to you?' he said.

'Isn't that obvious?' James exclaimed. 'What is this place anyway? Why is this mouldy old alleyway so interesting to all of you?'

'Just out of curiosity,' said the man, adopting a friendlier tone. 'Why did your Mr Green bring you here? I take it you're not actually friends.'

'Never seen him before today,' James replied.

'He said he was interested in the _history_ of this place,' added the red-haired girl.

'Ah, is that right?' said the man.

'If you must know,' said James, shrugging his shoulder, 'he got me to tap on some bricks here with a little stick. Looked a bit like a kind of joke shop magic wand if you ask me. Nothing happened, unsurprisingly. Now you turn up here acting like we were trying to break into a government ministry or something.'

The man in the grey sweater looked at him, rubbing his chin. He seemed vaguely amused at this, although his expression was largely inscrutable.

'James Black, that's what you said your name was?'

'That's right. Are you going to take my details or something?'

'Yes, but it's nothing to worry about. I'm more concerned about your friend Mr Green.'

'He's not my friend, I told you.'

'So you did. And that's probably for the better.'

He paused for a moment.

'Can I ask you one last question?'

Harry shrugged.

'I suppose so.'

'Does the name Harry Potter mean anything to you?'

'No, never heard of him.'

'Fair enough.'

'Isaac, is this just a coincidence?' said the red-haired girl.

The man called Isaac gave her an equally inscrutable look then looked down at his watch.

'Maybe,' he replied. 'But this isn't the sort of thing I would know much about.'

'I understand,' said the girl. 'But even you know something about…'

'I do,' he replied. 'But I try not to involve myself too much in _internal_ stuff.'

'But still, what do you think? Is it _him_?'

'It sort of looks like him. But then again, I only know the picture in the papers from several years ago.'

'I don't understand why there's no trace.'

'That is odd. It is possible that it's all a case of mistaken identity.'

The girl nodded.

'But say it is who you think it is? What can you do?'

'I don't know. I don't know if anyone is actually looking for him. He left of his own accord, as far as I know. And I don't really know anything about it. It's not my business anyway. Which only leaves contacting the press.'

'Oh I'm not going to do that,' replied the girl with a shiver.

They turned back to James. He looked pityingly back at them and their obscure and rather uninteresting dilemma. It didn't concern him anyway.

'Well, Mr Black,' said the man called Isaac. 'Sorry to have bothered you. I don't suppose there's any reason for our paths to cross again in a place like this.'

'Probably not. Can I go now?'

'Of course. But before you go let me give you my card. If Mr Green gets in contact with you again, and asks you to help him with anything else, would you call me?'

He reached into his pocket and handed James a business card. The card was blank apart from the name _Isaac Edwards_ and a mobile phone number.

'Is there any way we can get in contact with you?' said the girl, reaching into her bag and taking out a business card of her own. 'A phone number, an email address?'

She handed him the card. It was similarly sparse, bearing just a mobile number and the name _Argenta Coyle_.

He put the two cards together and put them carefully into his pocket.

'No,' he said, looking bleakly at the pair of them. 'I don't have anything like that.'

He felt Isaac Edwards scrutinising him again. The man's expression was grim, but there was a keen light in his eyes.

'Is there anything we can do to help you?'

He shook his head firmly.

'No. No thanks. There's nothing at all.'

He walked out of the alley and out onto the street. He glanced back for a moment: Isaac Edwards and Argenta Coyle were standing in front of the disused shop down the far end of the alley. With a final shrug of his shoulders he walked away.

The street he found himself on was unfamiliar to him, and he didn't know which direction to take. The rain was starting to come down harder again. _What happened to that hot meal you promised, eh_? He pulled his hood up and set off on a route of his own devising back through the streets. At times he found himself tempted to go back to the alleyway and the disused shop, as if he might meet Argenta Coyle, or Isaac Edwards, or even Joel Green, or as if there might be some way of seeing what lay behind the blocked up door. But as he left the neighbourhood behind him, none of them accosted him again.


	6. The last of Harry Potter - Chapter 6

6\. The watcher at the window

The evening rush hour was hitting full swing on Farringdon Road. The air was saturated with exhaust fumes and full of the roar of rush-hour traffic. A steady stream of office workers was passing up and down the hill and beneath them, out of sight, a tube train shuddered.

A girl struggled to keep up with the general pace on the pavements, more carried down the hill in the general flow of footsteps than actually choosing her direction. Dressed in a purple and black striped sweater, black beret, grey pleated skirt and doc martens, and carrying what looked like a clarinet case, she didn't look much like an office worker. Her eyes flitted over the passers-by overtaking her on both sides, assessing whether she had time to jump out of the stream and seek shelter in a doorway or under a shop front.

Suddenly she stopped and turned back on herself. A balding man in a white short-sleeved shirt nearly bumped into her.

'Watch where you're going,' he grumbled indistinctly in her direction. 'Sorry,' she replied sheepishly, trying to adjust her beret, which had been knocked aslant.

He gawked at her for a few moments.

'This isn't Shibuya, you know,' he remarked.

'She-wotter? the girl replied, genuinely nonplussed.

'It's in Tokyo. It's the… never mind.' The man tutted and went on his way.

After a second attempt at repositioning her beret, she took it off altogether and slid it into the clarinet case. She peered through the crowd of pedestrians coming towards her, now assessing how best to reinsert herself into it. Suddenly her eyes widened and she launched herself into the crowd, overtaking pedestrians as she tried to catch up with a trim, bearded man walking swiftly up ahead. He had long dark hair and thick-rimmed glasses, and was wearing a black t-shirt.

The man turned right onto Clerkenwell Road, his pace quickening with fewer pedestrians in his way. The girl increased her speed.

'Harry! Harry!' she called out. He kept walking. She paused, reaching down again to open her case. The next moment a miniature explosion went off just behind the man's head. He turned around abruptly and stared at the girl suddenly standing in front of him.

'Did you see what just happened?' he asked in an understandably agitated tone. _Definitely his voice_, she thought.

'I heard something go bang,' said the girl, 'but I didn't see anything, or see anyone throw anything.'

'Very strange,' he said.

_He's about the right age too. He was what… three years ahead of me at Hogwarts?_

'You don't seem to be hurt though,' she added. 'So all's well that ends well.'

He frowned quizzically at her.

'Yeah, probably.'

'Nice disguise, by the way,' said the girl, her eyes wide with curiosity.

'Excuse me?'

'The beard and the long hair.'

The frown turned to a scowl.

'Who says it's a disguise? Does this look like a fake beard to you?'

To make his point he tugged on the whiskers growing from his chin.

The girl smiled a rather confused smile.

'Well, _you_ would hardly need to wear a fake beard admittedly. You could conjure one in five seconds.'

'_Conjure_ one?'

The look on his face grew ever more perplexed. He glanced around the street, as if he was looking for a hidden camera, or the co-conspirators in a scam.

'You seem to think you know me,' he said, at the same time rummaging through his pockets to check he hadn't already been pick-pocketed.

'I do know you, Harry,' she replied.

'Harry?'

She looked even more curiously at him.

'Harry Potter.'

He paused, seemingly examining the name.

'Do you often go wandering about this close to the Ministry?' the girl added. 'I'm surprised no one's spotted you sooner. Beard or no beard.'

As she waited for a response she slipped the case onto her shoulder and folded her arms.

He seemed unimpressed.

'Seriously, what are you talking about? What ministry? And my name's not… what did you say it was? Harry Porter?'

She started to play with the strap of her case then stopped.

'Potter, she replied firmly. 'Look, I can understand that maybe you don't want to be recognised after what happened, but...'

'Look, seriously, you've got me confused with someone else,' he interrupted, now more irritably. 'My name's Jim Black, as if it's any of your business!'

She looked at him up and down, now beginning to doubt herself. Then she looked into his eyes. _That's the right shade of green._ When she spoke again, she spoke in a lower, more secretive tone.

'Has someone cursed you?'

'Cursed me?' said the man apparently called Jim Black, half suppressing a laugh.

'So you really don't know how I am?'

'No, obviously.'

'You don't know my name's Demelza Robins then?'

'No,' he replied. 'I didn't even know the name Demelza existed.'

'So you don't know what quidditch is either? Or that I was on the Gryffindor quidditch team when you were captain?'

'Quidditch?' he said. His tone was derisive but there was a look of curiosity in his eyes. 'What's that?'

'Err … well it's a game... A game played by…'

'By who?

She lowered her voice even more.

'By wizards.'

He laughed.

'So you've mistaken me for a wizard, is that right? A quidditch-playing wizard at that?'

'Never mind,' she replied quickly, looking away. He reached for her gaze, an apologetic kind of smile on his lips.

'Listen …uhh … Demelza, it's been nice talking to you. Well, it's been surreal actually. But I'd better be going.'

Demelza said nothing but continued to scrutinise him with a rather hurt expression, as if she was still hoping that this would all turn out to be a joke, that he would slap her on the back and say something like _Of course I'm Harry. Imagine me not knowing what quidditch is!_

But the man who called himself Jim Black was already starting to walk away.

'Anyway,' he said, briefly looking back over his shoulder at her. 'I hope you find this Harry person you're looking for.'

'Thanks,' Demelza replied in as bright a tone as she could manage. 'Take care Ha… I mean err... Jim.'

'Um … bye,' he called out, already twenty paces away.

Demelza stood quite still on the pavement, watching him disappear down Clerkenwell Road.

* * *

Hermione Granger was sitting at her desk in her office at the Ministry of Magic, twirling a quill around in her hand. The report on the international trade in dragon body parts had to be on the desk of her boss, Harold Hawkwell, by 9 o'clock the following morning. The report was virtually finished of course: all she had to do was incorporate the findings she had just received from a field operative working undercover in Budapest, adjust her conclusions and give the report one final read-through. It wouldn't be a late night in the Ministry, but she didn't expect to leave before half seven.

She let go of her quill, which swooped to a hovering height of its own devising just above the surface of her desk. Then she closed the report and stood up. She needed some fresh air or daylight, both of which were hard to come by in the catacombs of the Ministry, real fresh air and real daylight, that was.

Her office had a window, but it looked out on a stylised street scene generated by a scenery charm, one of hundreds you could pick from a Ministry catalogue. There were empty beaches with little waves gently breaking on them, green hills under wispy white clouds, sheep bleating in the distance, a day of the dead celebration in a Mexican cemetery, even selected vistas of Hogwarts.

The scenery charm running in Hermione's office that month depicted an overcast London street mid-afternoon in the rain. She had picked it because it showed a street directly above where the Ministry actually lay. It was about as close to having a real window as you could get.

She looked out into the rain, a dim and slightly grey reflection of her face visible in the magically-generated glass. Her hair was tied back in a severe ponytail that was just starting to bring on a dull headache. She was wearing no make-up, and the only jewellery visible was a pair of silver earrings that came from her grandmother. Her throat was pale and unadorned; just below it she could make out the uppermost stripes on her top and the collar of her usual work blazer. _Very professional-looking_, Ron's mother invariably said whenever Hermione arrived at the Burrow in her work clothes, in a tone that suggested that she couldn't understand why she would want to dress like that. _You can tell she's Muggle-born_, she had heard someone saying once in the corridor. '_I just can't dress like a typical wizard_,' she had told Ron once, in a tone that she had regretted afterwards.

The light on a wet and overcast afternoon wasn't much, but there was something comforting about the rain incessantly falling in the charm. Or usually there was. That afternoon it was just falling: falling on the imaginary umbrellas of imaginary pedestrians, their heads down as they made for somewhere inside, smearing the windows of office blocks and shop fronts, forming illusory puddles on the street, and falling bleakly on imaginary cars, vans and buses spewing odourless fumes into the air as they crawled slowly past.

Harry Potter had been missing for just under a year.

In that year no one had gone looking for him, so deeply was he in disgrace with his friends.

She sighed and tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. As she raised her hand, the sleeve of her blazer slipped down a bit. She glanced from the window down at her bare wrist, just for an instant. Then with her other hand she reached out and touched the pale skin that had been exposed.

She had promised not to look for him, out of loyalty to the Weasley family. What he had done was totally wrong of course, and the only way back was for him to come back and apologise. _And it better be a damn good apology_, as Mrs Weasley had quite rightly said. This had seemed to be the correct approach.

She had expected everything to sort itself out in a matter of days, or weeks. _He'll be back at her side soon, surely_.

But once three months had passed in silence, something seemed wrong: He wouldn't hold out on his apology. _He must be sorry for what he's done_. And why had he just walked out into the night, leaving his wand behind? _Why hasn't he tried to contact me? _Harry's wand had remained in Ginny's possession since his disappearance, but where exactly Hermione didn't know. Ginny never spoke of it, and it wasn't the sort of subject you just brought up. The wand hadn't been sent to Grimmauld Place with the rest of Harry's things either, she had been there to check. She therefore felt sure that Ginny kept the wand locked away somewhere, most likely in her bedroom. She had resisted the temptation to look through Ginny's things; it just wouldn't be right, and if Ginny was keeping it there, it would surely have charms guarding it. In the end she had just come out and asked Ginny if she could borrow the wand to perform _priori incantato_. She had met with a flat refusal. _It wouldn't change anything_, Ginny had told her. _He did what he did. What happened after that doesn't matter_. She couldn't quite leave it at that, even though she knew it was hopeless. _What if someone cursed him? Doesn't that change things?_ But Ginny had been adamant. _No one cursed him, Hermione, I'm sure of that_. After that she knew she would have to drop the subject.

Six months turned to nine, and still nothing. No one said anything, and she didn't dare to. But it gnawed at them all, at Ginny and Ron especially she was sure, just as the thought gnawed at her. _Is he still alive?_

A memory kept returning to her, creeping up in quiet moments: she and Harry were on the run, the last ones left after Ron had gone. It was late afternoon. Pale sunshine was fading from the sky and the air was turning colder. She was sitting in front of their tent where it lay in an area of straggly forest, looking up through a break in the canopy of bare branches, the sky beyond them turning grey already. _He's been gone too long_. _He's only supposed to be gathering firewood_. She jerked to her feet, scanning the trees that lay around the edges of the clearing for any kind of movement. Dead leaves cracked underfoot. She looked around for the direction she remembered him heading a couple of hours earlier. It was futile, hysterical even. _As if I'm going to find him this way_. She could see far off through the trees, but there was no sign of anything moving. _Which is partly a good thing, at least no one's coming to get me_. She found herself walking forward anyway under the brittle trees. _They've caught him._ Her heart beat frantically at the mere idea of it. Maybe he was just lost. _Not a very comforting idea either_. But another alternative kept presenting itself. _He's gone off to finish this on his own_. He'd hinted at it before. More than once he'd make some reference to how sooner or later he'd be alone. Each time she would explain that there was no way she was leaving him. _Maybe he thinks this is helping me_. _Well, it isn't_. She walked on and on, going in circles for all she knew, the explanation that he'd left, supposedly for her protection, seeming ever more convincing.

The thing was that she never got to what really happened: how eventually she returned to the tent, shaking with fear and stress, only to find him waiting for her. She had hugged him silently, making no mention of her fears. She would try to reach deeper for the elusive memory, but what came to the surface was paper-thin and monochrome, like it had barely even happened.

She stuck to her promise not to act. But she had to say something, to Ron at least. One evening in their bedroom, he sullenly conceded in a voice barely above a whisper that, yeah, Harry's disappearance was sort of strange and probably not like him. _So what should we do?_ she had said. He shrunk down into his armchair, brooding over his reply. _How do you find a wizard who abandons his wand and disappears into the Muggle world?_ She thought about suggesting that he ask Ginny for Harry's wand, even if the passing of time made _priori incantato_ less likely to work, but she felt sure Ginny would refuse Ron just as she had refused her. So she dropped the subject.

She even tried sending an owl, but it brought back the letter she sent undelivered.

An interdepartmental memo squeezed itself under the door of Hermione's office then glided up onto her desk before promptly unfolding itself in front of her.

_Hermione, would you have a moment? Harold_

Her boss was obviously back from meeting the Minister. It was the date of the monthly meeting of the inner circle of the Ministry: Knott, Penhaligon, O'Dowd, Hawkwell, Tremayne. _All jockeying for position no doubt. Well, maybe not Tadgh O'Dowd_. He seemed quite content in charge of the Ministry's accounts. She had worked with him on mending relations with the Gringotts goblins the year after the fall of Voldemort. Very serious, very intelligent, very correct. She rather preferred him to her own boss. Still, to give Harold Hawkwell his due, he was less arrogant than Mortimer Knott, less scheming that Luther Penhaligon and less arrogant and scheming than Myra Tremayne. _Are you the next Myra Tremayne, Hermione_? Someone had actually had the cheek to say that to her recently, supposedly as some sort of joke. She seriously hoped that that wasn't how her colleagues saw her. Poor Kingsley didn't really fit in with them, even if he was Minister for Magic. He was the first minister in more than fifty years to serve as Minister for Magic while keeping his old position as Head of the Auror Office. _If they hadn't kept me on in the Auror Office, being Minister for Magic would be unbearable_, he had said once. She had thought it a nice way of putting it. Being Minister hadn't changed him. It had worn him down a bit though.

Almost an entire year it had been. Not a word from him, just a word, to let her know that he was all right. Maybe she didn't know him so well after all. _No, that isn't the reason_. _There's no way._

The memory of her pointless searching for him in that wood had even made its way into her dreams. She would find herself under the same desiccated forest and cold sky at dusk, only in the dream she kept on walking, out beyond the forest and onto brown heathland, and finally onto a mud-spattered lane that led down through anonymous hills. A single question kept repeating in her head: _Am I looking for his grave_?

She recalled with great clarity the last time she had seen him. It had been just a couple of weeks before his disappearance. Harry and Ginny had come to the Burrow for Sunday lunch. Their visits to the Burrow had been growing rarer for some time and often Ginny came alone. Harry seemed increasingly restless and distracted. This was obvious to Hermione, and it was undoubtedly clear to Ginny, who herself was more subdued, but reluctant to confide in her.

After lunch, the four of them had gone for a walk in the hills around Ottery St Catchpole. Harry seemed intent on walking faster than anyone and soon he had put a substantial distance between himself and the rest. As Hermione walked with Ginny and Ron, Ginny began to tease Ron about his fascination for a Muggle games console their father had recently brought home. Hermione lingered by their side, holding back from making any comment, even though she already loathed the sight of Ron staring into that console. After a while she also started to quicken her pace, shooting a glance back over her shoulder at Ginny, who gave her what looked like a rather dark stare. Gradually she caught up with Harry, whose head was just disappearing over the brow of a hill. She walked briskly to the top of the hill then almost ran down the other side, stumbling a little in her haste. Hearing someone bearing down on him, Harry turned around. Instinctively he reached out his hand to steady Hermione as she stumbled down the slope and caught her. He quickly let go of her and she straightened herself up. She smiled at him, and after a few moments he smiled back. They went on together into the valley below.

'I seem to see less and less of you these days,' she said after a while in a hurried voice, still a little out of breath.

He turned and offered her a rather disconsolate smile.

'I know, I'm sorry.'

'Is everything all right?'

'Everything's fine, Hermione.'

His tone of voice wasn't very convincing; deliberately, she thought.

She turned to him and looked right in his eyes.

'Really?'

A brief smile flashed across his face.

'Well, not really.'

She returned his smile but said nothing in reply.

'That's the problem actually,' he continued. 'I should be more grateful about how things are.'

She looked across at him.

'What things?'

She knew very well what things.

'Harry, you're allowed to be sad sometimes. You more than anyone.'

The path they were following descended until it was running along by the side of a small brook lined with alders. The trees threw Harry's face into shade.

'I'm not sure. Not anymore.'

She reached out and touched him gently on the arm.

'You can't expect just to get over everything. Some things we'll never get over.'

He smiled.

'We have everything we could ever wish for,' he said in a soft, singsong sort of voice. 'But it's all a bit too wholesome. It almost makes me sick. Do you know what I mean?'

'How come we get to enjoy it,' she said, looking cautiously at him, 'yet so many of our friends are dead in their graves?'

He nodded grimly.

'I'm sure they don't think the worse of you, or of any of us that survived.'

'The boy who lived,' he said bitterly. 'Lived and lived again. Always someone else to die for me.'

'Harry, you died too.'

'And was given the choice to come back. The choice, mind you! Who else gets that?'

She reached out her hand again. This time she caught hold of his arm, just below the elbow. For a few moments she held onto it.

'No one does. But when you took the curse, you didn't know you could come back. You went into it the same way as everyone else.'

His eyes flickered for a moment.

'In a way you're right.'

'So keep on mourning for them. But don't think you cheated them or something. They knew what they were doing. I almost envy them'

'Envy them? Don't say that. What would I have done without …'

'I know. I don't exactly mean that I wish I'd … But I was ready to. Just like they were.' She ran her hand through her hair and sighed deeply. 'What I mean is that I didn't get a chance to prove …'

Now he reached out and touched her.

'You proved everything. More than anyone. I had to hold you back, remember?'

She smiled at him, even though she knew that smiling wasn't quite the right thing to do in the circumstances.

'But you know that I would have, Harry, don't you?'

They heard footsteps approaching. Hermione glanced around. Ron and Ginny had nearly caught up with them.

'Yes, I know,' he said, giving her a last look before acknowledging the arrival of the others. The four of them walked along the lane together, their voices quieter until the conversation revived, but not the same one.

_We never got to finish our conversation_.

She walked quickly out of her office and turned right down the corridor. Harold Hawkwell's office was at the opposite end of the corridor from hers. Further down, a little knot of colleagues was half-blocking the way. She could hear their murmured voices as she approached: _Julia Massey, Jocasta Plinthe, Fuchsia Drummond_. A little peal of laughter rippled around the group, their heads turned towards each other conspiratorially. Fuchsia's extravagant green dress with gold stars seemed to flutter in the corridor, catching Hermione's eye as she turned away. She had been the one who had said Hermione dressed like a muggle-born.

It had been on a day much like that one, working alone in her office, when she had the idea of writing to him. She remembered how she had sat at her desk, staring at the blank piece of paper, even sliding it under Ministry work at the sound of a knock at the door. When she was alone again she neatly wrote a solitary line in the middle of the page:

'_You can tell me anything_'.

There was no need to sign it. She folded the piece of paper and put it in a drawer. To send it by owl was out of the question. The moment when she could deliver it herself came several days later. One afternoon she slipped out of the Ministry and disapparated to the building where Harry and Ginny lived. Having passed the front door, she looked at the row of metal letterboxes lined up on the wall in the entrance hall of the building. Leaving the note in the letterbox would be even riskier than sending it by owl. She climbed the stairs to his floor and stood chewing her lip in front of their door. There was complete silence on the landing. She glanced down for a moment at her left wrist, took out her wand, whispered _Alohamora_ and went inside. No additional charms were protecting the flat. You didn't really need them anymore.

There was no one in the apartment. She looked around for a place to leave the note, not daring to touch anything. She swiftly decided that their bedroom would be more likely to yield a hiding place that only he would find. Scarcely breathing, she stepped into their bedroom and looked around for a corner of the room that seemed to be his. The room was neat, neater than he would ever have kept it. Off to one side of the bed was a small night table, scattered with random objects: a pile of books, a framed photograph and a disordered collection of papers. She took a page from the top of the pile: it was somewhat crumpled and not recent, and was scribbled with instructions for a spell for healing burns. She laid the page down just as it had been before and slipped the note under the first book in the pile. Once she was satisfied that no part of the note was protruding from the pile, that it was in no way visible to the casual eye, she left the scene.

'Hermione! Hermione!' A girl's voice called out to her from down a corridor that branched off to her left. _Not Fuchsia, or Jocasta, or Julia._ She barely had time to turn before the girl reached her, out of breath and grabbing her arm to steady herself. Hermione stepped sideways in surprise, almost stepping into a pot plant brightening up the corridor. Standing next to her was Demelza Robins, who had recently started an internship at the Ministry.

'Hermione I think I just saw Harry!' Demelza delivered the news in a loud whisper, one that was louder than she intended. Hermione turned her head for a moment: Julia, Jocasta and Fuchsia were now all looking at them with interest.

'Um … Hi Demelza, there you are … come into my office,' she said quickly, talking Demelza by the arm and guiding her back down the corridors. She could feel the girls' gaze on their backs as they went. There was no need to go and see Harold Hawkwell _immediately_.

Shutting the door carefully, Hermione beckoned for Demelza to take a seat, then swayed round her desk and sat down opposite her.

'You saw Harry?' she began, her eyes wide with expectation.

'Half an hour ago, on Farringdon Road.'

_That close to the Ministry_?

'I had just left work. I came back especially to tell you.'

Hermione tried her best to compose herself.

'Thanks so much for coming to me, Demelza. How sure are you that it was him?'

'90% sure. I mean, it was his face, his voice.'

'You _spoke_ to him?'

'Yes. Only he said he wasn't Harry Potter and that he didn't recognise me. He had long hair, a beard, and different glasses. And he had just the right colour eyes. He really seemed not to recognise me. But I'm sure it was him.'

She tried to picture Harry with long hair and a beard but couldn't quite manage it. How could he be wandering about just above the Ministry of Magic, not far from an entrance to the Ministry they had both used countless times? How could he act like he was oblivious to the wizarding world, to all his friends, to her even?

'Maybe he's been enchanted,' she said, half thinking out loud.

'I thought that too,' replied Demelza. 'He had that kind of weird look in his eyes.'

The thought that Harry had been cursed had occurred to her before. She had wondered about the Slytherin wizards he had been seen with the night of his disappearance. They had seemed sort of all right to her, even if they were from Slytherin. But now, with what Demelza had told her, it seemed quite likely that a memory charm had been cast on him. It was impossible that he would not recognise Demelza, a fellow Gryffindor and quidditch teammate.

'You said you saw him on Farringdon Road?' she said after a short pause.

'That's right. I followed him onto Clerkenwell Road. I lost sight of him after that but I cast a tracing spell. He went as far as St. Peter's Church, then turned down Hatton Garden. He crossed over Holborn, then went down Shoe Lane and St Bride's Street. The trace lasted as far as Fleet Street.'

The streets were well known to her. She sometimes walked them during lunch breaks, mingling with the Muggles.

'That gives us something to go on. That's brilliant, Demelza!'

Demelza beamed at this praise.

'So what do we do now?'

Hermione pushed her chair back as if she was about to get up. Then she thought better of it and pulled her chair back to her desk.

'Stake out the area, see if he comes back tomorrow. You say you saw him just now, so I suppose it was just after five o'clock.'

'Yes, it was around five.'

'Well, maybe he actually works round here … of all things. Maybe he had just come out of work and was on his way home.'

Demelza nodded.

'I suppose if he has lost his memory, he must think he's a Muggle and has gone and got himself a Muggle job.'

'Exactly.'

A faint sort of scraping noise was coming from the door. Hermione looked up and saw a second memo making its way to her desk. _Damn_. She turned back to Demelza.

'Can you make it for say 4.45 tomorrow afternoon?'

Demelza nodded and smiled. She seemed pleased to be included.

'Where?'

'The railway bridge, on the corner of Farringdon Road and Clerkenwell Road.'

Hermione was out of her seat before the memo had even unfurled itself. The corridor was empty when she and Demelza got outside.

'See you tomorrow then,' said Demelza.

'Yeah, see you,' replied Hermione, starting down the corridor for Harold Hawkwell's office in a kind of daze.

_How on earth am I going to concentrate on work now_?


	7. The last of Harry Potter - Chapter 7

7\. Muggle artefacts

Hermione was walking through the Muggle part of Ottery St Catchpole. Instead of apparating straight to the front door of the Burrow, she preferred to walk the last stretch of the route home. Skirting around the village green, she followed a winding road that led out of the village. The street lighting was scarce, but she had no fear of the dark as she passed from light to shadow and back to the light. The street was silent apart from the occasional passing car. From time to time she glanced up at the houses she passed every night, around dinnertime or later. Behind their tall fences and long front gardens, the lights were on in most of the houses. She walked on, keeping up a brisk pace.

Towards the edge of the village, she arrived before a gap between houses, a plot of overgrown land on which a disaffected, brick-enclosed electricity substation stood, set back a little from the road. A faded 'for sale' sign protruded from the tangled bushes, forlorn in the orange glare of a streetlight. She stopped in front of the abandoned plot and peered through the glare at the disused substation building, as she did almost every night. Her eyes ran over the cryptic words that had been daubed on the windowless brick wall of the building:

_Britain_

_needs_

_a witch hunt_

The message had appeared some months previously. She knew full well that it could be interpreted in any number of ways, but its proximity to a cluster of wizarding families seemed too much of a coincidence. She had mentioned it to Ron and his family, but no one had thought it important, and no one had wanted to come with her to see it, not even Ron. There were no more real dangers those days.

She stood on the narrow pavement and read the message again. About a month earlier, she had seen scrawled on a wall in Dalston the words '_Root out witches_'. Was that coincidence too? Who in the Muggle world believed in witches strongly enough to write graffiti on a London street?

As she looked on, fresh words suddenly started to appear on the wall, as if being written by an invisible hand. She reached into her pocket and gripped her wand, transfixed by the scene in front of her. After a few moments, the new message was complete. It was written in red letters, just below the older message:

_Witchcraft is real and to be feared._

_What I say is the truth, I am one of them._

Hermione wheeled around, but didn't take out her wand. She thought she saw a flicker of movement a little way off down the street, but that part of the road was in darkness. All was silent again and the lights were still shining obliviously in the houses on either side of the substation. She returned her gaze to the wall, reading the words again and again. She would be adding it to her collection.

* * *

The Weasley family were gathered around the dinner table in the Burrow. George and Percy had evidently joined Mr and Mrs Weasley, Ron and Ginny for dinner. By the time Hermione arrived, the last of it had already cleared itself away: it was commonplace that she wasn't back in time for dinner. As she entered the kitchen, her portion of the evening meal sprang from the pot on the stove and arranged itself neatly on the table, place mat, knives and forks and all, in her usual spot between Ron and Ginny. Well-worn smiles of understanding greeted her as she sat down at the table. She said a quick thank-you as she sat down, her head bowed slightly in a ritual act of contrition towards Ron's mother. 'You're welcome, dear,' Mrs Weasley replied, in a voice that was only too aware of the inevitability of the situation.

Hermione turned to Ron and delivered a quick, soft-voiced 'Hi'. As she did, the thought that she could be about to find Harry rushed back into her mind. She wondered if it showed on her face. She glanced across the room for an instant, as if something had caught her eye. Then she looked back at him. _No, I don't think I gave anything away_.

'…Anyway, the misuse of Muggle artefacts has become simply the _use_ of Muggle artefacts,' said Mr Weasley, apparently resuming a conversation that had started before Hermione entered the kitchen. She started to open her mouth to mention what she had just seen, but stopped.

'In fact, the Ministry is giving up on trying to control them,' Mr Weasley concluded.

Hermione swallowed her first mouthful of food and looked up. The subject was of interest to her: it worried her too.

'I heard that Muggle artefacts are turning up even at Hogwarts nowadays,' she put in.

Professor McGonagall herself had mentioned it on a recent visit to the Ministry. Hermione had come across her in the upper cafeteria, stooped over a cup of tea. _Between you and me, Hermione_, she had said, with a swift gesture at her teacup, _I need this after a meeting with that Myra Tremayne_. _In fact, a shot of whisky wouldn't go amiss_.

'Teachers are finding more and more students with mobile phones,' Hermione added.

'Is that right?' said Mrs Weasley in a disapproving tone.

'Muggle studies has never been so popular,' Mr Weasley continued. _I wonder who told him that_?

'It's the new generation,' said Hermione.

'Aren't you supposed to be the new generation?' remarked Percy.

Hermione shrugged.

'Not really,' she replied.

'Speak for yourself,' said Ginny sardonically.

'Younger wizards are more and more interested in the Muggle world, in Muggle music, Muggle films,' Hermione continued. 'So it's no wonder Muggle artefacts keep turning up everywhere.'

'More Muggle artefacts are turning up in this house than ever before,' interrupted Mrs Weasley, with a withering stare at Ron. Ron looked away and back towards his father, who promptly continued with what might have been called a rant if it hadn't been delivered in so affable a tone.

'First they send us extra staff to deal with all the cases of wizards using Muggle artefacts. Then they cut our staff, arguing that it's no longer possible to control the situation. We're just supposed to monitor and document it. The word is that we're going to be merged with the Muggle Liaison Office.'

'The irony of it is,' remarked Percy from the far end of the table, 'that wizards were more united before the fall of Voldemort.'

_How easily everyone says his name these days_.

'I don't remember _all_ of us being so united,' commented George.

'Well, we were in the end,' replied Percy quickly, a slight blush on his cheeks. 'We were focused on defeating Voldemort. We didn't really think about Muggles all that much, except that by defeating Voldemort we would be saving them. The Muggles never knew what happened. Just that a spate of mysterious deaths and disappearances died down. The Muggles are as ignorant of us as always.'

_Are they_? Hermione was about to interrupt but Percy went on.

'But like Hermione says, Muggles have become more interesting to wizards. Dad used to be seen as an eccentric. Sorry Dad.'

'No offence, son,' replied Mr Weasley, a wistful grin on his face.

'Muggles used to be seen as simple, primitive even. But now they have devices that do things that even wizards think of as useful.'

'Ah, I always thought that,' remarked Mr Weasley, a twinkle in his eye.

'Yeah, but you were more into those Muggle machines that did things in an hour that a wizard could do in two seconds with a wave of his wand,' replied Ron.

'It is amazing,' said Mr Weasley, still wistful, 'the amount of effort they put into devising something like a dishwasher.'

'A dishwasher's one thing,' said Percy. 'Even I admit that there's something rather endearing about the fact that Muggles make such things. But some wizards are starting to prefer the Muggles' 'technology', as they call it, over magic.'

'I suppose that's another dig at my games console,' said Ron, who was just starting on a piece of toast.

'It certainly is a dig at your games console,' said Hermione, looking at him drily. The console was a constant source of annoyance to her.

'Hermione's right,' said Mrs Weasley. 'When was the last time you got any exercise, Ronald Weasley?'

'Even I'm starting to regret the day I brought that into our home,' added Mr Weasley.

'Blimey, things really are getting serious round here!' said Ron with an air of wounded exasperation.

'I have to admit,' said Ginny, 'some people these days seem to see magic as nothing more than some kind of labour-saving device. Why walk when you can apparate? Why do any work when you can use magic to do it for you?'

'I thought you said _you_ were the new generation,' said George mischievously. 'All of a sudden you sound like you're complaining about them.'

'It's not just younger people I'm talking about,' replied Ginny, giving her brother a dirty look. 'What about Ron here?'

'Do you mind?!' Ron spluttered through a mouthful of toast. 'What's everybody got against me tonight?'

'It's nothing personal, Ron,' said Hermione in as placatory voice as she could manage. 'But you do like that console.'

'That's right dear,' said Mrs Weasley, standing up and bustling round the table. 'I'd just like to see you on that thing a bit less. Now, I've got some work to do.'

There was a lull in the conversation as Mrs Weasley gathered up her knitting and went through to the parlour.

'Wizards have got _complacent_,' said Hermione in a low voice, breaking the silence. No one reacted straight away. She looked down, feeling everyone's eyes on her.

'Perhaps the wizarding world is just evolving,' said Ron, putting down his toast and staring defiantly at the assembled company. 'That must happen from time to time.'

'It is evolving, and you're right Ron, it's inevitable,' said Hermione. 'But what if it's not just changing, but has actually gone into decline? I'm not against progress, I admit to using a mobile phone as much as any of us, but what if technology has reached a point where it makes magic seem less necessary, less enchanting?'

She looked around the table. So far everyone was following her in silence.

'Anyway, Muggles are just as worried about the effects of their own technology. I read it all the time in the papers and on the internet. I've heard Mum and Dad and their friends talking about it at dinner parties, more than once. Civilisations rise and fall. I suppose wizarding civilisation can rise and fall as well.'

'Steady on there,' said George. 'How did you get from mobile phones to the collapse of civilisation?'

Hermione blushed slightly. She probably sounded like one of the guests at her parents' dinner parties, railing at the ills of the world halfway through their second glass of Shiraz.

'Ok,' she conceded. 'Maybe that's pushing it a bit far.'

'The real point, though,' said Percy, '… and a few wizards nowadays could do with remembering it, is that magic is a very different thing from Muggle technology, and much more powerful. We should remember how separate our worlds are.'

'Are they?' said Hermione. Her voice came out louder than she had intended.

'What do you mean?' said Ginny.

'What I mean,' Hermione continued, softening her voice, 'is that Muggles seem ever more likely to suspect and believe that we exist.'

She looked around; they were all looking at her. She took a deep breath and went on.

'I see signs that the Muggles are waking up to us. And when they do they fear us.'

'You mean your Muggle graffiti,' said Ron.

'Exactly,' said Hermione.

'Hermione,' replied Mr Weasley, 'I know we've talked about this before. If there is fear among Muggles, it's fear of the unknown. There are plenty of Muggles who believe there's such a thing as witchcraft and who fear it. But given what they imagine witchcraft to be, they could be walking down Diagon Alley and they still wouldn't realise they were in the presence of true magic.'

'You're right,' said Hermione, 'but is it really so inconceivable that with enough persistence, those who believe in and fear the existence of magic could find a way to cross the threshold?'

'There are barriers in place to stop that,' said Percy. 'It remains one of the Ministry's main tasks, as you know.'

'You could be on the trail of wizards for years on end,' Mr Weasley continued. 'But the chances of actually coming across an opening to the wizarding world on your own are tiny.'

'That's all true of course,' said Hermione. 'But what if someone opened the door to them?'

She described what she witnessed that night. Then she fell silent and lowered her gaze to her mug of tea.

'It's probably someone's idea of a joke,' said George. 'A kid from one of the local wizarding families probably thought it would be funny to write a threatening reply to the Muggle graffiti.'

'They wouldn't be allowed to do magic outside of Hogwarts,' replied Hermione.

'Point taken,' said George. 'Not kids then.'

Mr Weasley was thoughtful. Finally he turned to Hermione.

'Hermione, you shouldn't read too much into what you saw tonight. But as for your idea that there may be wizards who would deliberately reveal our secrets to Muggles, there's something in that. It's worth consideration, but I have no idea how you would go about detecting it.'

'_I'll_ be giving it some thought,' said Hermione, her eyes flashing. For a few moments no one said anything else on the subject. She looked down at her dinner. It was quite obviously cold and now she noticed that she was really quite hungry. Quietly she started to eat.

'Time for me to head off,' said Percy, getting up from the table. 'Thanks for dinner, Mum!' he shouted, calling through to Mrs Weasley in the parlour.

'You're welcome, dear,' came Mrs Weasley's voice from the other room.

He turned to Mr Weasley. 'Dad, could I have a word?' Mr Weasley nodded and they left the kitchen together.

Ron drummed his fingers on the kitchen table.

Ginny sighed. 'I suppose you're itching to get back on your console.'

'No,' said Ron, without much conviction.

'What do you get out of it? It's totally childish,' Ginny continued. 'You should get some exercise too,' she added, jabbing a finger into his stomach.

'Oi, watch it,' said Ron. 'It's just a bit of fun. I'm not going to theorise about it. And the wizarding world isn't going to fall down around our ears as a result of it. It's a release.'

Hermione put down her fork and turned to him.

'A release from what, Ronald?' She seemed more curious than annoyed.

'It's just a bit of excitement, you know?'

'_Is it_ exciting?' she asked drily, her eyebrows raised. 'Vicarious, automated pleasure, that's all it is. If you want a bit of excitement you should get on your broom and get out in the fresh air.'

'Oh, like a certain person used to do, you mean?'

She realised she had stopped thinking about him, distracted by muggles, their technology and their suspicions. _Should I tell them? We haven't mentioned his name for so long. Maybe things have calmed down by now._

Ginny stood up abruptly from the table.

'See you later, guys,' she said and headed off up the stairs.

_Ok, I get it_. She said nothing. Ron, on the other hand, had more to say on the subject.

'Look where that gets you. I'll stick to my vicarious pleasures, if you don't mind.'

_They're still angry about it_. She looked down at the kitchen table at the remains of her dinner. Then she picked up her fork and silently began to eat what was left of it.


	8. The last of Harry Potter - Chapter 8

8\. The girl in the churchyard

Hermione apparated into an alleyway just off Turnmill Street. Since she always dressed like a Muggle, she wasn't worried about drawing attention to herself as she stepped out onto the street. She hadn't changed out of her work shoes: she could move quickly enough in them if needed, which happened quite often at work.

She crossed the road and headed in the direction of the railway bridge, looking like any other office worker. The bridge lay in the full glare of the sun. There was no sign of autumn that afternoon, and it was hotter than she expected, although that was fairly typical after spending a day underground.

She had quite a lot of faith in Demelza's judgement, and so she found herself quite confident that she had really seen Harry the day before. _So stupid of me to be so confident. I'm setting myself up for disappointment_. But if it was him, there was the possibility, the dreadful possibility, that he hadn't been cursed and had instead simply cut his ties with his friends, her included. _But then he wouldn't be walking around five minutes away from the Ministry, where he could bump into a hundred people who know him_. So maybe it wasn't him after all.

Demelza was sitting on the railway bridge, scrutinising each person as they passed. It had just gone 4.45. She waved to Hermione as she reached the bridge.

'Sorry I'm late,' said Hermione, as Demelza jumped lithely down off the wall. 'It was a bit of a problem getting away from work at this time.' Demelza was wearing an olive green top, a long grey knitted cardigan and maroon trousers, Hermione noted. _Dress as much like a Muggle as you can_, she had briefed her on the phone the night before. _Good enough_, Hermione thought. Demelza's eyes blinked rapidly as her gaze flitted over each person who crossed the bridge and fanned out onto streets that led away from it. _She has phenomenally good peripheral vision_. Hermione remembered Harry raving about her qualities as a quidditch player more than once.

'Which way did he come from yesterday?' asked Hermione, as they positioned themselves at the end of the bridge, just across the road from the junction between Farringdon Road and Clerkenwell Road. 'From up that way,' Demelza replied, pointing up the hill.

They leaned against the brick wall of the bridge. Hermione half-feared that someone was going to come up and berate them for staring, or worse, start trying to chat them up. Being in direct sunlight on the exposed bridge was starting to get unpleasant. A mass of grey clouds was welling up over to the west, and she found herself willing the clouds to come and cover their part of London.

Demelza suddenly gripped Hermione's arm and pointed at a figure coming down the hill.

'There he is. That's who I saw yesterday. What do you think?'

She almost couldn't bear to look. Even from a distance, the way he walked was familiar. _But why the beard and the long hair, are they supposed to be some sort of disguise_? From the angle she was looking his face was obscured, but she already felt sure it was him. She would have to talk to him, no matter how difficult or painful it might be.

He entered the junction, now scarcely ten feet away from them. He watched for a break in the traffic, not looking in their direction. Eventually he spotted his chance, crossed the road quickly and turned onto Clerkenwell Road.

As quickly as he had appeared, he began to disappear back into the crowd. Hermione slipped her wand from her bag and cast a tracking charm, her wand barely moving as she held it against her bag's open zipper.

'Just in case,' she murmured to Demelza. 'Let's go.'

They crossed the road and headed onto Clerkenwell Road. They followed him at a good distance all the way down Hatton Garden and watched as he crossed Holborn. At this point he strayed from the route he had followed the previous day, meandering onto Fetter Lane. The street was quieter, so they dropped back further. Then he turned onto Fleet Street, back into the roar of the traffic and the thronging crowds of pedestrians. They redoubled their pace, weaving along the pavements to avoid losing him.

'He seems to be doubling back on himself,' remarked Demelza. 'Do you think he knows we're following him?'

'I don't think so,' replied Hermione, a little out of breath. 'I think he's just following a quieter route to wherever it is he's going.'

'I wonder whether he's planning to take a bus from Fleet Street,' said Demelza.

'That could take him in any number of directions,' said Hermione. 'If he does, and we have to get on the bus with him, you'll have to make yourself inconspicuous. Even though it's the rush hour, he might spot you.'

He continued along Fleet Street, making his way calmly through the mass of pedestrians, before suddenly disappearing out of sight. The girls began to walk even faster.

'He must have turned down a side street,' said Hermione. She looked up for a moment.

'We're very near St Bride's Church here.'

They turned onto the side street. At first they saw nobody. Then Hermione grabbed Demelza's arm and gestured to her to look up. The nave of a church rose up before them, built at a higher level than the narrow lane onto which they had turned. To the side of the church were benches, arranged neatly behind iron railings in the stone churchyard. He was standing in the churchyard, in the process of choosing a place to sit. _It's him. 99% it's him._

She turned to Demelza and pointed to the pub on the other side of the lane.

'Wait for me in there. It'll look suspicious if he sees you. I'm going up there to talk to him.'

Demelza nodded, watching as Hermione ascended the little stone staircase that led up to the churchyard. The clouds were building over the spire of the church: it would soon be overcast. The sun was still shining, but the shadows were longer, the shade deep among the tall buildings.

By the time she entered the churchyard, he had sat down on a bench with his back to the lane. As she came through the gates, she glimpsed him take out a cigarette and glide it deftly into his mouth. _He's smoking now? Or am I actually going mad and trailing a complete stranger?_ She looked at him again as he leaned back against the bench and looked up the church, puffing on the cigarette. _No, it's definitely him_.

She made for an unoccupied bench that was within his eye line and sat down. The exertion of trailing him at such a pace through the busy and polluted London streets made itself felt as soon as she sat down. Her brow was hot and her legs felt weak. Crossing her legs, she took a paperback out of her bag, opened it at a random page and looked down at it, looking over the edge of her book and across the way.

Soon she felt his gaze on her. She looked up abruptly and briefly made eye contact before looking back down at her book. She allowed a few moments to pass and looked up again. Again she caught his eye. The eyes were green. _They're his_. Three times she tried to read the same sentence in her book but couldn't put it together. _This is ridiculous_. _We're like two lonely office workers making eyes at one another during our lunch hour. The only thing we're missing is a sandwich and a coffee in one of those cardboard containers_.

She glanced up again. His eyes narrowed for a moment, as if he was trying to place her. She looked away, towards the tall, sombre windows of the church. _He's still looking_. She turned her head and looked straight at him deliberately.

'Hello,' he said sedately. The voice that carried across the little expanse of churchyard separating them was instantly recognisable.

'Hello,' she replied, a little hesitantly.

He leaned forward in her direction, putting his hands on his knees.

'Sorry for how ridiculous this is going to sound, but I'm sure I've seen you before.'

For a moment she didn't reply. _You have, Harry, you have!_

He seemed to be trying to gauge her reaction.

'Seriously. I'm not just saying it. I wouldn't normally speak to someone like this.'

_What does this mean? Amnesia certainly, a memory charm most probably, but obviously the memory loss isn't total._

'What is it that makes you think you've seen me before?'

Her voice came out more coolly than she had intended. Her reply seemed to put him off a little. _No Harry, that didn't come out right_. She almost wanted to go over to him and slap him around the face. _You're damn right you've seen me before, Harry Potter …_

'I have a terrible memory,' he said earnestly. 'But you remind me of someone from my past. A friendly face from the past. Sorry,' he said suddenly, lowering his face and covering his eyes with his hand. 'I must sound like a weirdo.'

'No,' said Hermione quickly, half standing up. 'Don't worry. I … uh, was just having the same feeling. I think I know you too.'

The tactic was slightly dishonest, but it was better than slapping him, or even worse, taking out her wand and trying to de-curse him.

He stood up and came over to her bench, gesturing vaguely at the place next to her.

'Please,' she replied, smiling at him, half-starting to get up and then sitting back down.

He offered her a cigarette. She refused politely.

'Didn't think you would somehow,' he said with a smile. 'You're right not to smoke. You don't mind if I …?'

'Of course not,' she replied, making a little waving gesture with her hand. 'Have you been smoking for long?'

_Ridiculous question._

'Not so long,' he replied, lighting the cigarette once he'd finished speaking. 'But long enough to get hooked.'

'I'm glad,' she said, resisting the temptation to touch him on the arm or the knee. He took a drag from the cigarette then took it away from his lips. The breeze blew the smoke away from them.

'Thanks,' he said, looking at her with what she wanted to think was a look of complicity. 'I'll try not to. Get addicted to them I mean.'

A pause imposed itself, as she didn't know how to reply.

'So…' he went on, 'do you think we might have gone to the same school?'

'Maybe,' she replied. 'I went to a boarding school.'

He seemed to analyse this piece of information.

'So did I,' he said finally. 'What was your school called?'

'Hogwarts.'

She shook his head.

'Never heard of it, I'm afraid.'

He seemed to her a little disappointed, but she might be imagining it.

'Where is your old school?'

She smiled in spite of herself.

'Oh, somewhere really hard to find,' she said. 'I suppose you'd say it's in the Highlands of Scotland.'

'Sounds interesting,' he said. 'My old school was somewhere quite remote too. Thing is, I can't remember much about it.'

He leaned a little closer to her and said in a lower voice:

'I've got a problem with memory loss.'

_Shall I tell him now?_ For an instant she thought about grabbing his arms, shaking him and telling him who he was.

'I'm sorry,' she said softly, suddenly deflated. 'What happened to you?' She wondered what on earth he was going to say by way of a reply. For a while he didn't answer, as if he was trying to remember that detail too.

'Were you in an accident?' she suggested after a few moments.

'No one's been able to tell me,' he replied. 'But I think it's quite likely. I remember some sort of … I don't know … heavy impact. It was in a forest, I think. Something very hard and fast and hot collided with me. I seem to remember blacking out, seeing a kind of light, then waking up again.'

_I could tell you a lot more about that night, Harry. I could tell you what hit you in the woods, even if I wasn't there. _

'It sounds like you had a kind of out-of-body experience,' she said instead, mutely cursing herself for her cowardice.

'Yeah, something like that,' he agreed.

Suddenly he looked rather forlorn.

'I must be coming across as a weirdo again. Sorry about that.'

'No, it's ok,' she replied quickly. 'I don't think you're a weirdo.'

'You know. It's quite easy to talk to you,' he replied, almost in a reverie.

_You can tell me anything. _She closed her fists, digging her nails into her palms.

'You know, I think … I seem to see you without the beard. Your glasses were different too.' She gestured towards his current glasses, which had thick black rims.

'You must have a very good memory for details. I can't even place you, and you remember that I changed my glasses.'

'Oh, girls are good at noting those kinds of details,' she replied. 'You did have different glasses then.'

She felt her confidence rising.

'I did. I used to have round ones. They made me look a bit geeky.'

Hermione smiled.

'I reckon they would have suited you.'

'Oh I don't know, I prefer these now. They're more resistant anyway. My old glasses used to get damaged a lot.'

She looked away for a moment.

'And you really don't remember where you've seen me before?'

'I'm not sure. But as I said earlier, I have a terrible memory. So much of my past I can barely remember. That comes from not having any parents. I was brought up in an orphanage.'

'An orphanage?'

'Yes, a small one. But like I said, I can't remember that much about it. I just remember they weren't very friendly. I had my own room, which was something I suppose, but it was small and rather dark..'

'God, that must be so sad,' said Hermione. 'I have so many good memories of growing up, of my school, of my friends. We went through all sorts of hardships, faced dangers even, but it was the happiest time of my life. I miss those times.'

'You know, I wish I could have been one of your friends.'

She looked down at her lap, squeezing her nails into her palms again, stronger this time. As she looked up, a tear rolled down her cheek before she could stop it. She wiped it away hurriedly.

'I'm sorry,' he said. 'This _is_ weird, isn't it? It was out of order of me to start on my sob story.'

'I don't think it's a sob story,' she replied, her voice half-choked.

'I haven't even told you my name.'

'What is your name?'

'It's James. James Black. And I really am harmless by the way.'

A nervous little laugh escaped her. _Slightly hysterical, control yourself_.

'James Black?' She stuck out her hand. 'Pleased to meet you, James Black. I'm Hermione Granger.'

He paused before shaking her hand, as if her name seemed to perplex him. She probed his gaze, looking for any sign that her name might dislodge something in his brain. But his expression regained its former serenity. He took her hand and shook it firmly.

'So what do you do?' he asked politely.

'I'm … a civil servant,' she said, smiling again in spite of herself. 'What about you?'

'I work in a bookshop on Exmouth Market. Specialised in the occult.'

'The occult?' She hoped she didn't look too surprised. _Are you playing with me, Harry, after all? Is this all some kind of horrible joke?_

'And what's your opinion of the occult?' she asked..

He smiled a warm, almost contented sort of smile.

'Neither for nor against it. Pays the bills. But we do have some interesting books there. You strike me as the sort of person who'd be into books.'

She sat up a little straighter.

'Books? I love books. At school you would always find me in the library.'

'Well, you should come in and have a browse sometime. I could do you a staff discount of course.'

'Of course you could!' she said, and laughed again. 'But why did you choose to work in an occult bookshop? Something must have attracted you to it.'

'Well, what attracted you to being a civil servant?'

'Do you really want me to answer that?'

'You can if you want.'

She felt a breeze blowing across the churchyard and realised she was cold. Her jacket, rather inconveniently, was stowed in her bag. _It will look a little strange if I pull it out of my bag, unfolded and perfectly uncreased. A bit like a conjurer pulling coloured scarves out of a top hat._ For a moment she debated with herself what effect a sudden display of magic could have on him. _Trying to shock someone out of a memory charm is very risky_, it had said in the book on memory charms she had found and borrowed from the Ministry library.

'It's really not that interesting. Maybe another time.'

The suggestion that they might meet again seemed to please him.

'Working in an occult bookshop sounds much more interesting,' she continued. 'What _did_ attract you to working there?'

'Well,' he said, 'it had to do with dreams. I tend to have very vivid recurring dreams. And I saw this book in a shop window, _The Dreaming Mage_, by J. Brabizon Barrett. It had this strange symbol on the cover that I'd never seen before. So I went in. Just randomly. I didn't have the money to buy it. They were looking for someone to work there.'

She almost started to tell him that she knew the book, that she'd seen it in Hogwarts library, that J. Brabizon Barrett was a proper wizard. But she didn't.

'What sort of recurring dreams do you have?'

'Oh, there are a lot of snakes. And a castle, by a lake.'

She looked at him.

'My school was in a castle, by a lake.'

He looked at her quizzically and for a moment there was only silence. She took a deep breath and tried to affect an offhand tone of voice.

'So do you believe in magic?'

He looked at her strangely again.

'Well, I don't think I've ever witnessed any real magic, but if I did, then I suppose I would have no problem believing …'

A mobile phone started ringing in his pocket. He broke off his gaze, reached into his pocket and answered the phone.

'Hi. No, I've left work. I'm just on my way to Blackfriars. You? Great. Oh Ilaria, shall I get a bottle of wine for tonight?'

'Ilaria!' exclaimed Hermione.

He looked up at her and frowned a little.

'Sorry,' she said. 'It's just that I knew someone at school named Ilaria.'

'Your school keeps coming up,' he remarked, rather circumspectly, she thought.

'It's an Italian name, isn't it?' she said quickly.

'Yes, it is.'

He looked down at his watch and stood up.

'Well, Hermione,' offering her his hand again, 'I'm going to have to get going. It's been really interesting. Maybe we'll...'

She got to her feet too and shook his hand goodbye.

'Maybe,' she replied. 'Although this is London, so…'

'But I'm guessing we work in more or less the same area, so you never know...'

'That's true. My work is quite close to Exmouth Market.'

_Yes, an unmeasurable number of metres directly below it, most likely._

'Yeah, feel free to drop in. I'm serious about the staff discount. Armin won't mind.'

She smiled.

'Well, I'm sure I'll find _something_ to interest me.'

'Excellent. Well, bye then.'

'Bye.'

He started to walk away.

'Err… James?'

'Yes?'

'Try not to get addicted to smoking.'

He nodded, smiled, then walked quickly to the steps that led down and out of the churchyard. She watched him walk down the steps and disappear around the corner.

She was sitting on the bench when Demelza found her.

'Was it him?'

Hermione nodded, no words coming out of her mouth.

'Did he …?'

She shook her head.

'No, he didn't … well he sort of did. I mean he had some slight recollection of me. He thought we must be some kind of vague acquaintances.' A sob rose up in her throat as she said the word 'acquaintances', making her voice go up in pitch in the middle of it. Demelza sat down and put her arm around her. She tilted her head until it was resting on Demelza's shoulder.

* * *

James Black stood on the platform. Darkness had fallen and a chill breeze had started to blow up off the Thames and down its length. The rush hour was nearing its end, but the platforms were still crowded.

He stood some way back from the platform edge, glancing up at the departure board too often and otherwise staring across the tracks at the platform opposite. After a few minutes he started to walk away from the other passengers, passing out from under the station canopy and out into the open air. The night didn't feel so close down near the far end of the platform, where fewer people were waiting for their train. An empty train languished by the side of the next platform, its lights all switched off.

His head felt strange. He struggled to analyse the sensation, to describe it to himself. The image that finally came to mind was that of an opaque sphere, only the sphere had a crack in it. It was as if the sphere was around him, or around his brain, like a second skull. Beyond it lay a darkness, an inviting darkness beyond the gloom that enveloped him, muffling all sound and making all light hazy. Above him the clouds in the evening sky seemed to coil in on themselves. The platform that stretched across the river suddenly seemed to be moving of its own accord, pulling away into the distance, while the stationary train remained fixed in place, motionless on the rails. He looked down at his feet, the edge of his boot protruding over the edge of a small pool of water on the platform. A diffuse light flashed erratically in the reflection, and the darkness beyond it seemed to him like the opening to another world.

Finally his train came clanking into the station. He boarded it in the first carriage. The carriage was half empty and he dropped down on a seat where there was no danger of anyone sitting down opposite him. He remembered the girl in St Bride's churchyard. Her face seemed to emerge from the gloom, like that of a passenger on a train passing in the other direction. It had been the right decision not to offer her his phone number, far better to make the possibility of any further meeting dependent on her coming to the shop. She had seemed to know him, though. Perhaps it had been a mistake not to ask her more about where she knew him from. But he would have come across as even more of a weirdo than he already had. And there was something else which gnawed at him, something to do with her. Possibly. Or maybe it was all just rubbish. There was plenty of that in his head.

At last his train pulled out of the station and began to crawl into the suburbs of London. No, perhaps it was better if she didn't ever come into the shop. That was more likely anyway. He closed his eyes, shutting out the sterile light of the train carriage. No more opaque sphere or anything like that. It was better on this side.


	9. The last of Harry Potter - Chapter 9

9\. The passing of the wand

The Weasleys were all assembled at dinner when Hermione came in.

A quick 'hi,' was all she could manage as she meekly took her place at the table between Ron and Ginny.

She had spent the best part of a minute on the doorstep, trying to empty her thoughts as much as possible before going inside. It hadn't been that easy. She had been halfway across the village when the presence of _The Dreaming Mage_ in Harry's occult bookshop finally struck her as significant. It wasn't that unusual for a wizarding book to make it into a muggle bookshop, and J. Brabizon Barrett, with his bushy white whiskers, fez and velvet suit, would seem like your average crank to a muggle, but it was possible that wizards were behind the occult bookshop. And if there were wizards involved, then it was possible that a brainwashed Harry might be under their control. But now she couldn't think about that now, she would seem even more distracted than usual.

As she sat down, a spoon, knife and fork arranged themselves in front of her and a bowl of hot soup landed on the table. To her surprise, she had actually arrived more or less on time for dinner. She glanced over at the clock. Dinner seemed to be later than usual. _Is it on purpose?_

It had momentarily fallen silent at the table, which struck her as odd. She looked quickly around, but everyone seemed to be eating their dinner just as usual. She brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes, took up her spoon and methodically began to sip her soup.

'Tough day, Hermione?' asked Mr Weasley with a smile. She looked up from her soup.

'Uh … yes, a little bit.' She paused for a moment. 'I had to do some field work, and that left me behind with my usual work, so I had to stay a bit later. Demelza was helping me.'

'Oh yeah, I forgot Demelza's working at the Ministry now,' said Ron. 'How's she getting on?'

'What do you mean, you forgot?' Hermione replied in a low voice. 'You must have only seen her a couple of weeks ago.'

'Oh yeah, you're right,' he replied airily.

'In any case, she's getting on very well,' Hermione continued. 'I think there's every chance the Ministry will take her on permanently.'

'Good for her,' remarked Ron, dropping his spoon into his empty soup bowl with a clang. 'She's not a bad quidditch player either,' he added.

'To be fair, Ron,' put in Ginny, 'she's better than _not bad_.'

'Shame she was on the Gryffindor team that lost the Quidditch Trophy to Slytherin,' Ron shot back.

'Doesn't change the fact that she was a really a good chaser,' Ginny countered.

'Phenomenally good peripheral vision,' Hermione murmured. Ginny turned and gave her an odd sort of look.

'Well, say hi to her from me next time you see her,' Ron continued.

'Will do, Ronald,' said Hermione, half smiling at him.

Hermione took little part in the dinner table discussion. She didn't have any comment when Mrs Weasley mentioned that the Cradocks were getting a house elf, and how could they afford such a thing. The Cradocks were a slightly smaller and somewhat better off wizarding family whose house was no more than a hundred yards from the Burrow, halfway up a nearby hill. The Cradock children were all younger than the Weasley children, so they hadn't played together all that much in childhood. The Cradock boys had always been particularly wary of Fred and George.

Hermione already knew about the Cradocks' house elf, as she had bumped into Hortensia Cradock, the eldest sister, on a previous evening's walk home. As a child, Hortensia had often been playfully mooted as Ron's future wife, but the only time Ron had ever shown any interest in her had been when he found out she was going on a teaching internship at Beauxbatons. Hermione had no worries about the Cradocks' house elf being mistreated: Mr and Mrs Cradock weren't the kind at all. They had only got one, so Hortensia said, because of her mother's health. Ron's mother made no mention of this being the reason for the house elf, and Hermione didn't think it her business to bring it up. So she stayed silent.

The meal came to an end, the dirty plates cleared themselves away and the various family members began to get up and drift away from the table. Hermione lingered in the kitchen. Once the table was clear, she took some papers out of her bag and started to look over them.

She began to leaf absentmindedly through the papers, skipping vast sections of the lengthy document and arriving too quickly at the end. She started again from the beginning and made a second, slower pass through the document, until she alighted on a particular annex that caught her interest: 'Minutes of the inter-departmental meeting of September 13th'. She passed rapidly through the opening sections of the minutes, stopping at a section halfway down the third page:

'_Comments by Isaac Edwards, para-magical investigator (external contractor), and Argenta Coyle, Witchfinder Liaison Officer:_

_Citing increased Witchfinder activity, Isaac Edwards made a request for his service contract to be amended to include provision for an additional full-time equivalent. Edwards mentioned in particular the case of a mob being raised against a wizarding family by the name of Venn, who had been living for a number of years in the village of Canewdon, Essex, which despite being inhabited chiefly by Muggles has a tradition of cunning folk and is normally regarded as safe territory by wizards. A small mob was led to the village from a nearby town. The mob banged pots and pans and chanted slogans in front of the Venns' house then daubed the house with red paint before smashing its windows with stones and trying to physically assault Nathaniel Venn, one of the Venn children, as he arrived home from school. The mob was eventually dispersed by Muggle police, who made no arrests. The mob was apparently raised by a man who styled himself as a witchfinder._

_On other matters, Argenta Coyle mentioned that the only collaboration between witchfinder liaison and the rest of the Ministry was ad hoc and based on personal contacts. She also presented a logbook of anti-wizard graffiti collected by Hermione Granger of the Department for the Care of Magical Creatures._

_Mr Knott, the deputy head of the Muggle Liaison Office, said in reply that the question of amendments to the contract for para-magical activities would be forwarded to the Legal Department and expressed his concern at the reports of heightened anti-wizarding activity in the Muggle world_.'

Ron ambled back into the kitchen. He walked up to the table and looked over Hermione's shoulder.

'Annual report on Muggle relations? What an exciting read.' Hermione turned around swiftly.

'Do you mind, Ronald?'

'Calm down!' he retorted.

'I am calm,' she replied, softening her voice as much as she could.

'Seriously,' he continued, 'do you really have to bring your work home with you? It's bad enough how long you spend in the office every day. And anyway, you're not even in that department. What do you need to read their report for?'

She elected not to snap back at him.

'You're right, Ron,' she replied, 'I shouldn't. But I can't make proper sense of my work if I don't have an overview of how everything works in the Ministry. I go to meetings where I have to fight to get our department's view across with people who seem to know _everything_ and who look at me as just some naive upstart. I have to know as much as them even to be taken seriously.'

'You'd have thought you managed that when we defeated old Voldemort,' said Ron.

_Really, Ron, you're calling him 'old Voldemort' now?_

'Maybe. But you'd be surprised how quickly people forget. And to be honest, there are plenty of people who don't know that I even had anything to do with it. Some people have asked me _Oh, were you at the Battle of Hogwarts, Hermione?_'

Ron snorted.

'I reckon I'd punch someone in the face if they asked me that.'

Hermione narrowed her eyes slightly.

'Well, I'm pleased to hear that they haven't asked _you_ at least. But you know, there are plenty of people in the Ministry, and pretty much everywhere else for that matter, who didn't exactly cover themselves in glory when the Death Eaters rose to power. Those people know very well who did what back then and they don't want reminding. And when they see you or me or Ginny anyone else from your family, they're reminded of what they did, and they resent us for it.'

'I see your point,' said Ron. 'But I honestly can't say I've experienced it.'

'I have experienced it,' said Hermione firmly. 'I've seen the look on their face and heard their tone of voice when they speak to me. And I'm not so unreasonable that I'm just going to put it down to them thinking that a woman shouldn't be doing the job I do.'

_There's some of that all right too, but anyway … _

'You're probably right,' said Ron. 'But the thing is, the Battle of Hogwarts was what? Four years ago? You can't quite blame people for wanting to get on with things.'

'I understand that,' Hermione replied. 'But it's not like I ever bring up the past with them. Heaven forbid!'

'Anyway,' Ron continued, suddenly rather riled, 'when that idiot did what he did and did a bunk, it sort of took the shine off it in some people's eyes.'

Hermione shrugged impatiently in reply.

'If Harry hadn't defeated Voldemort those people wouldn't be here to gossip about him.'

Ron frowned.

'Doesn't excuse what he's done since.'

_This isn't the time to get worked up over this._

'No it doesn't, but defeating Voldemort makes …'

'…Makes what he did to my sister pale into insignificance?'

'I'm not comparing the two things.'

'Sure about that?'

'I don't condone what he did, Ron, you know I don't.'

'But you're willing to give him the benefit of the doubt?'

'I'm waiting to hear his side of the story.'

'Well, you'll be waiting a long time by the look of it.'

She paused before replying. _Is this the moment to tell him?_

When she made no answer, Ron began to mooch away from the table, as if he had reached his limit in the conversation.

'Ron,' she began, a little more tersely than she intended, as she found it annoying to have to call after him. 'I know it's something of a taboo round here to …'

'To what?' he replied. She couldn't quite decide whether his brow was furrowed out of curiosity or anger.

At that moment, her mobile phone began to ring in her bag. She scooped it out and looked at the screen:

'It's Demelza,' she said. 'Probably work-related,' she added, but Ron didn't seem to be in need of a justification. He nodded, smiled ruefully at her and left the room. _Is he glad to avoid that subject?_

Now alone in the kitchen, she leapt on her phone and answered it.

'Demelza? Yes, I'm fine. Yes, I can talk now … I've already given it some thought. I think there'll have to be a confrontation with Harry and Ilaria, if it's really her that's involved. You'll have to tell me more about her. She was in your year at Hogwarts, wasn't she? … I'm going to get Harry's wand, I think we'll need it … Don't worry about work. I quite understand if you can't take time off, being an intern. You've been loads of help already.'

Having put her phone away, she sat back down and looked at the report still open on the table. What she had read worried her, but she couldn't concentrate on it anymore, so she closed the report and looked away into space. Isaac Edwards had a reputation for eccentricity and a dour, bleak demeanour. Argenta Coyle she remembered as a strange, sulky Ravenclaw girl a couple of years younger than her. She had been a surprise choice for Hogwarts head girl in her year, although Hermione remembered Professor McGonagall speaking rather enthusiastically about her. _Very sharp girl. More than meets the eye._ Both Argenta and Isaac had seemed genuinely surprised when Hermione had contacted them to pass on her information about anti-wizard graffiti. _No one ever helps us_, Argenta had commented. But now wasn't the right time to be dealing with that particular issue.

She put the report back in her bag, making a mental note to go and see Isaac and Argenta again as soon as possible. She would also have to look into whether the Ministry had any intelligence on the occult bookshop on Exmouth Market.

She pulled out her ponytail and ran her hand through her hair. Then she let her head sink down into her hands, her hair hanging down until it was just touching the table's surface. _I'm going to get Harry's wand_. That was what she had told Demelza. It was what she had decided as she walked the last part of the journey home through the village. It was only then, out in the night air, that she had been able to start thinking straight again. Sitting on that bench in the churchyard after he had walked away, she hadn't been able to put a coherent thought together..

_Memory charms … memory charms are the key_. She had two theories: either someone had cursed him after he walked out on Ginny that night, or he had performed the charm himself to try and erase the memory of guilt over what he'd done. _Priori incantato_ would have given a strong indication of what had happened, but there was no guarantee it would work a year later. She didn't have any idea of who would curse him; in any case it couldn't have been Ginny. But she couldn't believe that he would do something so dangerous either. Memory charms were tricky. You could erase a single memory if you were very subtle with the charm, but more likely you would wipe a whole load of memories all around it, or even a person's entire memory. _What did I do to those Death Eaters that night on Tottenham Court Road? How much damage did I do?_ She could still see their dazed, staring expressions as they lay on the floor of the café.

She raised her head and looked out across the kitchen: the lights were low and the room was silent. The others were in the parlour or upstairs. She looked keenly into the semi-darkness on the far side of the kitchen, towards the unlit fire. _We did what we had to do. But it still comes back to us in quiet moments, when we're alone_. _And if you're very subtle with a memory charm … you can wipe away the guilt _…

There were several reasons why she needed his wand, not least to give it back to him at some point. But if he had performed the charm with his wand, perhaps the same wand would be needed to undo it. The book she had on the subject suggested this was possible. How she was going to get it wasn't so clear. Stealing it from Ginny's bedroom was out of the question. She would have to ask for it. Maybe Ginny and Ron's response would surprise her. Maybe it was her last evening at the Burrow.

She went quietly upstairs. Ron was playing on his games console. To her surprise, he switched it off when she entered the room and turned to her frostily.

'What's this about you taking time off work? Since when do _you_ take time off? I thought you were supposed to be making your mark …'

She started to open her mouth, but he cut her off.

'Dad told me. He asks me: are you and Hermione going away somewhere? I say: what? He says: I heard that Hermione has applied for time-off at short notice. I say: that's the first I've heard about it. He says: Oh dear, have I put my foot in it? Of course he bloody has, and it wouldn't be the first time! So what's going on?'

_Well, so much for bringing it up carefully._ She took a deep breath.

'I think I've found Harry.'

He didn't immediately say anything in reply. Her words seemed to linger in the air between them. A frown passed across Ron's face.

'If you've found him, I suppose that means you've been looking for him.'

_Don't even think about going looking for him_, Ron had said the night Ginny turned up distraught at the Burrow. That had been almost a year ago. _But still …_

'Actually I haven't been looking for him.'

_Not strictly true …_

'Demelza saw him completely by chance and told me.'

'Oh, so that's why you're suddenly so friendly with Demelza?'

'No, that's got nothing to do with it. I've always liked her. Anyway, she told me, and I had to … well, see for myself.'

Ron folded his arms.

'And did you?'

'Err …yes.'

'Get a good look at him?'

'Yes. I …err … spoke to him too.'

'Did you? Even better. Send his regards, did he?'

Suddenly she felt like crying.

'He didn't know me, Ron! He wouldn't know you either, or Ginny, or anyone! His memory's gone!'

'Is it?' Ron's eyes were wide open now. The dirty look on his face shrivelled away.

'He has a different name, a different job, a different … life, even. I think he's under a memory charm.'

'What? Why?'

'I don't know! That's why I need to find out what happened!'

A slightly suspicious look returned to Ron's face.

'And I suppose you're off now to find out?'

'Well … don't you think I … I mean … do you want to come and help me bring him back?'

Ron's expression didn't lighten.

'You were going to tell me, were you? You weren't just going to leave a note and disappear?'

She swayed slightly on the spot. She hadn't worked out all the details, including what she would do if Ron did say no. _Would I have left a note?_

'Ron, I'm telling you now. And I'm asking if you want to come with me. Will you help me look for him?'

Ron reflected for a few moments.

'And if I do, what will I tell Ginny?'

_Good point_. She groped around for some sort of reply.

'Don't you think he'd have come back and apologised to her if he wasn't under a memory charm?'

Ron looked unmoved.

'I don't know. Depends when it happened.'

'Wouldn't Ginny want to know whether he didn't apologise on purpose or because he can't?'

Ron shrugged.

'How should I know that?'

'Well, do you think Harry should be left out there on his own, with all his memories gone?'

'No … but …'

'But what, Ron?'

'Well, he might be happier like that. You just said he has a job, a new life. Maybe he's even better off without all those bad memories. If _he_ hasn't got a head full of bad memories, I don't know who has.'

She could feel tears welling up again, but she choked them back.

'You can't be serious, Ron. You think he would be happy not being able to remember you … or me?'

Now Ron's face clouded over.

'Well … no … I mean this is such a weird mess I don't know what to think. And anyway, what am I supposed to say to Ginny? _Hi Ginny, Hermione's found Harry. He doesn't know who he is or who we are but he's made a new life for himself, fancy coming and seeing how he's getting on?_'

'I'll talk to Ginny.'

'_You'll_ talk to her?!'

He seemed to find the idea almost funny.

'Well, I'll have to talk to her,' she replied. 'I need her to give me Harry's wand.'

'Why do you need Harry's wand?' came another voice. Ginny was standing in the doorway.

Harry's wand had remained in Ginny's possession since she had returned to their flat and found the wand lying on their bedroom floor, abandoned along with all of the rest of Harry's possessions.

Hermione turned around to face her.

'I've found him,' she said in a kind of monotone. 'I think I'll need it to bring him back.'

'Bring him back? What makes you think he needs bringing back?'

She struggled to think of a reply. There was a simmering violence in Ginny's eyes.

'By the way, Hermione, thanks for being a really good friend and going behind my back.'

'Ginny, I didn't go looking for him. He was found by accident. And not by me.'

The fury in Ginny's eyes seemed to abate a little. It was her turn not to say anything.

'Don't you want to know where he is, what he's doing?' said Hermione.

Ginny shook her head firmly.

'No, he's made his bed, he can bloody well lie in it!'

She took a step towards Hermione, her fists clenched.

'And another thing, his wand stays with me until he comes to claim it. I'll let him have it then, and that'll be the end of it.'

_I won't let you._ She struggled to control the thoughts flashing through her mind. She didn't like the look of them.

'Well, Ron and I are planning to go and look for him anyway.'

'That's diplomatically put,' remarked Ron from behind her.

'Ron?' said Ginny, turning on him with a horrified look. 'I thought you promised me not to go looking for him!'

'I didn't actually say I would come,' said Ron, his face a picture of conflicting emotions.

'Ron, I thought …' Hermione began, her head reeling all of a sudden. 'At least I had the impression …'

'Well, I was just thinking about it,' he added more categorically.

Things were not going well.

'Ginny,' she began again, trying to take a more conciliatory tone, 'you know that I don't for a moment condone what Harry did. The absolute first thing he should do is apologise.'

Ginny smiled at this.

'He's been unavoidably detained for the past year I suppose? What do you think an apology's worth when it comes a year late?'

'Hermione thinks he's been put under a memory charm,' said Ron from his armchair.

'That's convenient,' said Ginny. 'So he forgot to apologise.'

'I understand why you're seeing things this way,' began Hermione again, 'but it's true. There's a real danger that someone has tampered with Harry's memory and is taking advantage of him, as we speak.'

As she spoke the words she remembered Ilaria de Angelis. She could easily be behind Harry's memory loss, wiping his memory as a way of seducing him. She hadn't met her more than a handful of times, but she remembered once seeing a certain look on her face in Harry's presence. Maybe Ginny would think differently if she told her. Even though she had no proof that the Ilaria Harry had spoken to on the phone was the same Slytherin witch. She reckoned she was 80% certain it couldn't be a coincidence. But 80% wasn't good enough. And telling Ginny could push her into doing something stupid, and dangerous.

Ginny listened in silence, a harsh smile again on her lips.

'That's not up to your usual standards, Hermione. I have a different theory: Harry performed the memory charm on himself out of cowardice, and strolled off guilt-free into a new life.'

'The thought occurred to me too,' Hermione replied quickly. 'And if you'd have let me perform _priori incantato_ on the wand we would have had a better idea. We might at least know that a memory charm was the last charm performed on it.'

'I told you last time you asked, Hermione, it wouldn't have changed anything. And anyway, I know what happened.'

'You do?' Hermione exclaimed. 'Did you perform _priori incantato_?'

'I don't have to,' Ginny replied. 'I know him well enough to know that he did it to himself. And unlike you, I don't need to try and cook up theories to absolve him of his guilt.'

'I don't want to absolve him of his guilt!' Hermione retorted. 'What he did was terrible. But can you deny he has enemies who would want him out of the way? Or people who want to keep him under their control? I know he can be reckless, but would he really do something so risky? Unless you're an expert at memory charms, you risk doing all sorts of damage to yourself. You don't just pluck out the offending memory and go back to business as usual.'

'Dumbledore could,' Ron remarked.

'Thanks Ron,' Hermione replied tersely. 'I should have said that only a wizard of Dumbledore's abilities could do it.'

'Oh, Harry Potter has a pretty high opinion of his own abilities in magic,' said Ginny with bright sarcasm.

'But do you really think he would use magic to try and … hide from his conscience?' Hermione replied. 'Surely you can't think so badly of him, Ginny?'

Ginny snorted in reply.

'And surely you can't think so well of him, Hermione?'

Hermione looked at her with a puzzled kind of air.

'But of course you can, I forgot you're his _best friend_. His most loyal friend.'

Hermione paused and took another deep breath.

'I think we're getting off the point. I don't think that the question of who is a better friend to Harry is relevant.'

'That's because there's no doubt in your mind as to who it is. But you don't know Harry as well as I do. As far as I know you've never shared his bed. You haven't been witness to his … dark desires.'

_Ginny, are you really saying this?_

'I don't need to share his bed to understand him.'

Hermione's tone was placatory, but firmer.

'You may think you understand Harry, Hermione, but really you don't get him. _I_ get him.'

Hermione looked coolly at Ginny. She could hear her heart thumping in her chest and pictured her blood pulsing erratically around her body.

'I have never, ever given you reason to be jealous of me.'

Ginny smiled.

'You don't think so? I could give you literally hundreds of instances, all the subtle little ways you assert your ownership of him, right in front of me. And I'm not the only witness.'

Hermione turned to face Ron, who looked down at the floor, a hard expression on his face. She turned back to Ginny.

'Ginny, you can keep your … conjugal bed. It's nothing to do with me. Like you say, that's your domain. But don't judge my relationship with Harry on your terms. You talk about the darkness in Harry like it's something that would scare me, like I wouldn't be able to deal with it. But I have seen it. It's part of him. He took it with him into the Forbidden Forest that night and brought it back with him too. And he's certainly never tried to hide it from me. Really knowing him means knowing that side of him. Apart from that, everything else is yours.'

Ginny smiled bitterly.

'I suppose you believe what you say. Maybe you even think you're not hurting me by saying it. But I wonder, is your relationship with Harry really so much purer and better than mine? What really went on in that tent, Hermione, once Ron was stupid enough to leave you two alone? What proofs of the sanctity of your relationship did you give one another?'

Hermione felt light-headed. She clenched her fists, as if to steady herself. She tried looking at Ron. His gaze was pointedly rooted to the carpet.

'I can't believe you're trying to demean what happened. Harry thought he was going to die. I thought I was going to die.'

Ginny's face was hard and dry, drained of all its usual softness.

'Yes, it's amazing what two people will do in such situations, especially when they're sleeping together alone, night after night.'

'For Heaven's sake, I swear it wasn't like that!'

Ginny seemed to draw back a little. But now Hermione felt herself falling headlong.

'If you really knew what he was going through then you wouldn't say the things you've said tonight,' she snapped. 'If you really knew him you wouldn't be so suspicious of him.'

Ginny looked like she was about to bite through her own lower lip.

'And you really think you do,' she hissed.

And she felt it again, the solidarity in despair that had bound them together in those days. She couldn't help but relive it.

'I know him because I was there with him all the time. I saw guilt for something he hadn't even done gnawing away at him. I saw how terrifyingly alone he felt. I had to try and share that feeling, even though there was no way I could. Not completely anyway. I couldn't turn away from it even for a second and I can't turn away from it now.'

It was almost as if the walls of the Burrow had fallen away, and she was back in the tent with him at some dreary hour in the depths of the night, the two of them facing one another, his face grey with worry. All she could do was to lock her hand in his and slowly stroke the skin of his clenched fist.

The sound of Ginny's voice broke through the memory. She was speaking in a low, pained voice.

'The night he put his hands around my throat to choke me,' she began, 'he did it to defend you in a way. He said something like what you just said too. I told him he was pining for the bad old days and he didn't contradict me. You say exactly the same thing. You're like his echo, in fact. I bet you love hearing me say that.'

_I do. I admit it._

'But that time is over, thank goodness. And your time is over too.'

Hermione stood a little taller, clenching her fists even tighter to bring her trembling under control.

'Well, it rather looks like we could say the same about you,' she remarked, more petulantly than she had intended. It drew a smile from Ginny, but she looked at her through eyes slit with anger.

'Oh, I suppose you're right … Or rather, his time with me is over. It was over the minute he raised his hands to my throat.'

The image of Harry with his hands around Ginny's throat flashed before her. But the image was incomplete: she couldn't see his face; she couldn't process it properly.

'I can't give up on him,' she said after a while. 'Not ever. That's why I'm asking you for his wand.'

There was a pause. Ginny spoke first. Her voice was calmer now.

'I'll give you his wand if you like, since you're so desperate to get him back. But you'll be doing it alone.'

As she spoke her eyes shifted slightly towards Ron, who saw her look and obviously understood it.

'You should have said you felt this way,' he murmured to her. His voice was more consolatory than she could have hoped to expect after all that had been said. She nodded, although she wasn't quite sure what she was nodding at.

'Ron, have you really given up on him?' she asked softly. 'Don't you want to believe that despite whatever has happened to him, he must really be bitterly sorry for what he's done?'

Ron seemed to be squinting half at her, half at Ginny.

'I don't know,' he replied. 'He still attacked Ginny then ran off into the night like a coward. I haven't seen him back here since, begging for forgiveness. Which is the least he could do.'

Hermione's expression hardened.

'Well I still think he hasn't come back because he can't. Now I've seen him I believe that more than ever.'

Ron shrugged.

'Yeah, I can see that's what you think. But you wouldn't be saying that if he had attacked you.'

Her reply died in her throat. She looked from one Weasley sibling to the other. She started to form a different reply then stopped.

'I know what her answer would be,' said Ginny, cutting in quickly and glaring at Hermione. 'So please spare us it. Anyway, the last words on his lips before he … did what he did … were to defend you, to defend you over me. So I guess it's fitting that you should return the favour.'

Now she took a very determined step towards Hermione.

'But I should warn you: if you do get your precious Harry back, you might not like what you find. You like him dark and damaged, you say. But you don't really know what you're saying. You're not prepared for the real Harry: a short temper, easily bored. A little bit violent; a little bit unhinged. He bites, Hermione. Your vision of Harry the guilt-ridden saint, the sad hero, is sort of touching. Maybe I even sort of believed it once. But really, at your age it's pathetically naive.'

Hermione listened to Ginny, her heart pounding. They looked at each other in silence. Then Hermione reached out her hand.

'Give me the wand,' she said in a low voice.

Ginny looked at her oddly. 'It's yours,' she said finally, her voice suddenly calmer, almost matter-of-fact. 'I'll leave it for you on the back step.'

'Ok.'

'I don't know what this memory charm business is all about,' Ginny continued. 'I honestly hope he hasn't done himself some sort of permanent damage, but I told you my theory already: He's a coward, I'm sorry to say. He did it to himself.'

A first wave of exhaustion passed through her.

'If he did it to himself and wiped his entire memory then he really did have no way of apologising.'

Ginny shook her head.

'You say it like apologising would have made a difference. If you're the sort of girl who would forgive Harry for everything he did to me, good luck to you. Goodbye, Hermione.'

She wanted to reply, but found that she was too exhausted to dredge up the words from inside her. Ginny waited no more than a few seconds before walking out of the room. A few moments later they heard her bedroom door slam shut. Hermione turned to Ron, who looked as if he was about to come apart at the seams. He half scowled, half smiled at her and shook his head. She sighed deeply, trying to release the pressure built up in her shoulders. As she sighed, a tear slipped from her eye and rolled down her cheek. She wiped it away quickly, then turned on her heels and walked slowly out of the room.

* * *

It was past eleven when she opened the back door of the Burrow and looked out into the night. She looked down and saw the wand lying innocuously on the doormat. She picked it up, turned it over in her hand for a moment, then stuffed it into her bag. She stood on the doorstep, tears welling up in her eyes again. She wiped them away and started to walk away down the path.

'Hermione.' It was Ron, shivering in his jumper.

'You're not coming with me after all, surely?' she asked, turning back where she stood. He took a few steps down the path towards her.

'I think this is something you have to do by yourself.'

'Yes, I think it probably is.'

They looked at each other in silence.

'Ginny has to understand that I'm not … I'm not a threat to her. This isn't about that. You don't really think I'm …?'

Ron screwed up his face.

'No I don't think I'd go that far.'

'Maybe you can get Ginny to think the same way.'

He snorted under his breath.

'I'm not sure I can.'

'Maybe not.'

'But if she asks me my opinion, I'll tell her that I don't think you're …'

_I can't really ask for more than that._

'Ron, you're a good person.'

'Oh thanks.'

'I'm really sorry.'

'I know you are. Anyway, I sort of knew this would happen sooner or later.'

'Ron, don't …'

'No no, let me go on. Despite everything, it's better this way than if one day he were to be brought back here dead.'

She looked at the ground. He put his hand on her shoulder.

'Thing is, Hermione, I walked away, more than once. You never could. If there was a chance that Harry could be found, you were bound to go after him in the end.'

She continued to look at the ground.

'You make it sound like I'm choosing him over you.'

He gave no answer. She looked up.

'It really isn't like that.'

'It is really though. And we all know it.'

'It's one detail, Ron. It's such a little thing.'

'Maybe you believe that.'

He lowered his hand and took a step back.

'Take care of yourself, Hermione.'

'You too,' she said almost silently, and kissed him on the cheek. 'I'll see you.'


	10. The last of Harry Potter - Chapter 10

10\. Knives

The street stretched off into the distance, darkness alternating with light. The temperature had dropped after darkness had fallen, and now their breath steamed as they walked quickly and perfectly in step, her hand cool and slender in his. He glanced across at her for a moment. Under the streetlights her skin was pale and her dark-brown hair almost black. She seemed not to notice he was looking at her, or at least pretended not to. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail, revealing her graceful profile, small, serious mouth, and green eyes concentrated on the street ahead of them. _I'm lucky to be with her_. She had on her favourite black leather jacket, an olive green embroidered dress, motorcycle boots over black tights. She was wearing more eye make-up than usual.

They were about a ten-minute walk from the station where she had met him off his train. She had led him along a succession of streets in an area of London he had never been to before, block after block and turning after turning. The stream of pedestrians dissipated as soon as they got away from the station and the parade of shops that led away from it. Behind the main road lay street upon street of terraced brick-fronted Victorian and Edwardian houses, some grand and recently renovated, others with tired, dilapidated facades or bearing the signs of cheap modernisation, chopped about to produce the largest number of flats.

'This is the street,' she said suddenly. On one side the street was lined by a tall brick wall topped by coils of barbed wire, obviously the back boundary of warehouses or some light industrial estate. The wall faced another row of terraced houses, similar to the other streets they had seen on the walk from the station, only more run-down.

'Do you reckon Armin will be there already?' he remarked.

'Probably,' she replied. 'We're not exactly early.' There was no trace of reproach in her voice. When he got off the train she had said nothing about how long she had been waiting for him on the cold platform, no questions about why he hadn't been on the earlier train. Instead she had reached up and thrown her arms around his neck, a slightly ironic smile on her lips as she leaned in and kissed him. Still, he felt the need to offer some justification.

'Yeah, sorry, that's my fault.'

Her only response was to glance at him with a faintly inquisitive look.

'It was a bit strange actually,' he continued. 'I met someone who said that they thought they knew me.'

She stopped walking suddenly, and he followed suit. They looked at each other on the dark street.

'Someone who thought they knew you?' Her gaze was now very attentive. 'Where was this?'

'In the churchyard at St Bride's Church. She was sitting on one of the other benches.'

'Oh, it was a girl?' A faint smile appeared on her lips.

'It wasn't like that,' he replied. He half expected a cutting remark, only she never did things like that.

'If you say so,' she said in a soft, tranquil tone. There was only the faintest trace of irony. After a moment she added:

'And so did she really know you, this girl?'

'Not sure,' he replied. 'We couldn't work it out. You know what my memory's like.'

She smiled and raised her hand, touching him lightly on the temple then on the cheek.

'Yes, I know, dear,' she said softly.

'She was quite interested in the fact that I work at Vlaminck's,' he added. Her eyes widened.

'Well, you work in a genuinely interesting place,' she replied.

'Ah, I don't know.'

'And did she know anything about the occult?'

'I suppose she knew a bit. Maybe she was just being polite.'

'Maybe.'

Another moment of silence passed between them.

'And what was her name, this girl?' she asked, her tone a little frostier.

'Hermione,' he replied. He liked the sound of the name as he pronounced it.

'Hermione?' she exclaimed, before adding in a more composed tone, 'That's not a common name.'

'Funnily enough, her reaction to your name was similar to yours.'

'What do you mean?'

'A bit surprised by it.'

She processed this information for a moment in silence.

'Yes, well my name is quite exotic in this country, I suppose. If we were called Sarah and Jane, no one would have raised an eyebrow.'

He saw her bite her lip for a moment. She seemed to suddenly feel the cold, and pulled her jacket tighter around her. She looked at him under the glare of the streetlight. _A little bit hurt but not wanting to say anything_. He reached out his arms and pulled her against him. She made no attempt at resistance.

'It was nothing. Really. Just an odd sort of an encounter. These sorts of things happen sometimes in London'.

She put her arms languidly around his neck.

'Let's not talk about it anymore,' she murmured. By way of reply he kissed her firmly on the mouth, almost lifting her up off the ground as he squeezed her.

'Ready to go in?' she asked as they uncoiled themselves from one another. 'We're just a few doors away.'

He looked down the rather forlorn row of houses.

'Which one is it?' he asked.

'It's the taller one, standing on its own,' she replied. A couple of houses down, the terrace came to an end. Standing in the middle of a piece of rather overgrown land, he could make out the pebble-dashed facade of a detached three-storey house. Straggly plants grew from its roof, which loomed above the neighbouring houses, and its chimneys pointed crookedly up into the night air.

'Ilaria!' exclaimed the girl who opened the door to them, hugging her on the doorstep and beckoning them inside.

'This is James,' said Ilaria as they stepped into the hall. A din of loud music and raised voices hit them straight away, together with the mingling of tobacco, cannabis and hot bodies.

'Pleased to meet you, James,' said the girl who had opened the threw her arm over his shoulder and kissed him on the cheek as if they were old friends. 'I'm Paola.'

They followed Paola down the long and narrow hallway and through an open door to the right leading into the house's living room. The room, which ran the full length of the house, had scuffed but lurid red walls and scant, tired-looking furniture, most of which was obscured by the bodies of the party guests, who were gathered in small groups turned inwards on themselves, each with a bottle in one hand and a lit cigarette or joint in the other. A few people were dancing rather haphazardly to the music, while others crouched or sprawled on the floor. At one end of the room was a table with a large metal tub on it, piled high with bottles of beer, half-sitting, half-floating in ice rapidly turning to water. Just helping himself to a beer was a tall, rangy man, dressed in black from head to toe. He had long, straight pale blonde hair that looked almost white under the lights.

'Armin!' James called out.

He turned round methodically, twisted the cap off his beer bottle and nodded to them before taking a long swig.

'You took your time,' he remarked in a deep, sonorous voice, as they met. 'I had time to close up the shop and still get here before you.'

'My fault,' said James quickly, but didn't go into any more detail.

'Drink?' said Armin.

'Absolutely,' James replied. Armin turned back to the tub of beers and pulled out two more. They went back into the throng of revellers and sought out a free section of the living room wall.

'So, how is the world of the occult?' asked Ilaria as they settled in against the wall. 'He never tells me much about how things are going at the shop.'

'Paradoxically, running an occult bookshop keeps me too busy to know what's going on in the world of the occult,' Armin began languidly. 'We might as well be selling spare parts for vacuum cleaners.'

James smiled and lifted the bottle to his lips. The beer was warmer than he expected. Despite his claims to the contrary, he could hardly imagine someone knowing more about the occult than Armin. He spent most of his life in his narrow, dusty shop, reading the books on sale on its shelves and reverently handling the unusual objects in the little room behind the counter.

'Actually, hermeticism is proving very popular this month,' James put in. 'Healing with crystals isn't doing so well though. We had a batch of faulty stock.'

'Very funny,' said Armin.

'We have a special offer on shrunken heads as well,' James continued.

'Who is this bloke?' said Armin to Ilaria, a look of mock outrage on his face. 'He certainly doesn't work in my shop.'

'If only that were true,' James replied.

'I can easily arrange it,' Armin retorted. 'I have a folder full of weirdos' CVs who'd snap up your job in a second.'

'Yeah, I've seen you out the back of the shop with your folder full of weirdos,' remarked James in mock disgust.

'Is that who comes into the shop then?' asked Ilaria, seemingly humouring him.

'Well, put it this way, they're not a very glamorous crowd, our customers,' said Armin. 'We don't have many alchemists and warlocks come in for a browse.'

'They're all dilettantes, then, your customers?' She made an effort to pronounce the word 'dilettante' as it would be pronounced in English, and succeeded.

'Not exactly,' replied Armin. 'Some of them definitely know what they're looking for. But more often than not it's teenaged boys who come in in little groups, trying to pretend to each other they know what they're looking at. They remind me of myself at that age, only I did know what I was looking at.'

'And do they think it's real, do they?'

'What's real?' An unfamiliar voice interrupted them. Standing in front of them was a tall, long-faced man with a dome-shaped, shaven head. He had small, inquisitive grey eyes and a thin nose. He was even taller than Armin, and more muscular looking. A mass of interlocking black tattoos crawled up his arms, forming unidentifiable shapes.

'Oh, just the occult,' said Armin.

The man snorted derisively.

'What fun,' he remarked.

'Can be,' replied Armin.

'What part of it?' continued the man in the same tone. 'Alchemy? Thelema? Communicating with angels? Conjuring tricks?'

'That's hardly an exhaustive list of what the occult is,' said Armin.

'Sorry, did I forget to mention healing with crystals, crackpot religions and reprints of mouldy old books of fake medieval magic?'

'Armin,' said James drily, 'looks like we have a sceptic here.'

'You could be right,' replied Armin in the same tone. Then he turned back to the dome-headed man.

'Calm down, friend,' he replied. 'No one's forcing you to consume it.'

The look of contempt on the man's face grew even deeper.

'It's all a con job,' he replied flatly. 'Not a shred of evidence for it.'

'And you've done the research, have you?' said Armin, his voice thick with sarcasm.

'My point is,' the main rejoined, 'is that the natural world is so much more potent than the pretend world of magic.'

'Well, maybe magic is about harnessing the powers of the natural world and using it,' remarked Ilaria in a quiet voice.

'Sounds great,' replied the man. 'Only it can't be done.'

'You know that, do you?' said Ilaria, a cold look kindling in her eyes.

'And what about using the power of will to control other people?' she asked in the same calm, but hostile tone. 'Do you think that can't be done?'

'That sounds more plausible,' said the man. 'There might be something in hypnotism. Or just plain charisma.'

'I mean more than just hypnotism.'

For an instant the man seemed to hesitate. Then he regained his composure.

'Well, you'd better give us a demonstration,' he commented coolly. 'I'll be the first one to believe you then.'

Ilaria looked at him contemptuously. Then her gaze relaxed.

'I don't do demonstrations,' she replied. The man leered in triumph.

'What a pity,' he replied and she looked away.

'Tell you what though,' he added. 'I can give you a demonstration of the power of will over the body.'

'Really,' said Ilaria with sarcasm. Her interest had been kindled though.

The dome-headed man glanced furtively around him. The party continued regardless of the man and the little audience he had drawn to him. Then quickly he drew a long, thin knife out of his pocket.

'What the hell do you think you're doing?' said Armin in a low voice.

'You'll see,' said the man. He raised the forearm of his free hand, flexed his fingers then brought the knife to the skin on the outside of his arm. He picked out a small circle of white skin free of tattoos then ran the knife along it. Blood began to seep out straight away, black under the weak, garish light of the party. Then he lowered his face to his outstretched arm, put his lips around the cut and, with a look of self-satisfied scorn, began to drink. After what seemed like about a minute, he swallowed whatever was still in his mouth, his eyes closed. Then with a flourish he reached into his pocket, took out a black cloth and wrapped it around the wound. Finally he wiped the bloody knife on his skinny black jeans, put it back in his pocket and looked defiantly at Ilaria, James and Armin.

'Very clever,' said James.

'Let me see if I've got this right,' said Armin, 'you come over here to have a go at us for taking the occult seriously, and all along you're actually some sort of vampire?'

'I knew you'd say something like that,' said the man. 'I don't need some ridiculous label taken out of one of your comic books.'

'So why do you do it then?' asked Ilaria quietly.

'Because I've willed myself to do it,' he replied, fixing her with his gaze. 'Because the human body can do a lot of interesting things when the mind wills it to. And because I like the taste of it. It's food to me. It's purifying.'

'It's a pathetic little stunt,' replied Ilaria. 'Something a teenaged boy would do to show off to his friends.'

'Whatever your opinion may be,' said the man, scowling at her, 'it doesn't involve any sleight of hand or mass delusion. It's real. It's natural.'

'So if a human could do magic that would be natural too.'

He half smiled, half grimaced.

'You give me one example of true magic.'

'You'll know it when you see it,' replied Ilaria.

The man snorted.

'This is getting boring. If you've nothing else more interesting to say I'll be on my way.'

To everyone's relief, he shook his head disdainfully and pushed his way back into the crowd.

'After all that,' remarked Armin, 'I could do with another drink.'

'Very good idea,' replied James.

'I agree,' added Ilaria.

'I'll get them,' said James. By then the revellers had shed a few more layers of inhibition and were moving more rapidly and unpredictably, the mass of people opening and closing and reconfiguring itself as James weaved his way through them. The man who had drunk his own blood was nowhere to be seen.

He pushed past a group of teenagers on his way back, two boys and a girl, standing in a little knot in a dark corner of the living room. The boys were pale and scrawny and dressed in black. The larger of the two looked rapidly around the room with wide eyes: he seemed vaguely intimidated by the atmosphere; the other looked pointedly at James with a look of cold, empty hostility. But the two of them were rather anonymous compared to the girl who was with them. Her hair was black and bedraggled, and she was dressed all in white: a lace babydoll dress, ripped white tights and white doc martens that looked as though they had been painted with tip-ex. Although she had her arm draped over the cold-eyed boy, she looked straight at James, her mouth laughing and pupils dilated. She unhooked her arm from her friend, who scarcely seemed to notice, took a self-conscious drag from her cigarette then lurched towards James.

'Come and dance with me, handsome,' she said in a surprisingly precise, clipped accent, reaching out her hand and running it down his arm.

'Thanks for the offer,' he replied politely as he tried to side-step her, 'but I'm here with my girlfriend.' He glanced over his shoulder: Ilaria was already coming towards them from the other end of the room.

'You say that,' said the girl in white, a crazed, laughing look in her eyes. 'But I saw you looking at me from across the room, checking me out. You've got such nice green eyes.'

Ilaria arrived just in time to hear the girl complimenting his green eyes. She leaned coolly towards the girl in white, wrapping James's arm around her waist.

'Excuse me, that's my boyfriend you're talking to.' She was politer than he expected.

'Aren't you the lucky one,' purred the girl in white, the same delirious look on her face. The taller boy tried to pull her away but she slipped free of him. 'But I've got to ask: how did you get him? Did you put a spell on him?'

Ilaria stepped towards her.

'You don't know what you're saying,' she said. 'And you certainly don't know who you're dealing with.'

'I don't know who I'm dealing with?' snorted the girl in white. 'No, _you_ don't know who _you're_ dealing with.'

'You need to sober up and sort yourself out,' Ilaria continued in a quiet, but more menacing tone. 'Otherwise you'll look a terrible mess for school tomorrow.'

'Come on, Rachel,' said her friend, pulling on her arm. 'There's no point.' She started to yield, but then cocked her head very pointedly in James's direction and smiled at him.

'I could get you, you know, if I want. And there's nothing that _she_ could do about it.'

Before he could reply Ilaria had stepped forward and grabbed the girl by the arm.

'Say one more word to him and you'll find out what I can do,' she hissed.

The girl in white looked down at Ilaria's hand then up into her eyes.

'I wonder which one of us is stronger,' she said in a soft voice. Then she closed her eyes. But almost as soon as she did so, her friend reached out his other arm and pulled her towards him, shaking her hard in the process.

'Rachel,' he said. 'Not now. Not here.'

The girl in white opened her eyes. Almost immediately the look of cool concentration blurred back into glazed delirium. She smiled into her friend's eyes then dropped her forehead down onto his shoulder, while the other boy looked on in amused silence.

'Come on, let's go somewhere else,' said James, himself tugging on Ilaria's arm. For a moment she stood still, looking at the girl in white and her friends.

'Cazzo di puttana,' she muttered to herself. Then she let James lead her away into the hall.

'Let's go upstairs,' he said. _I don't much like the people at this party_.

On the second floor they found a bedroom that was surprisingly empty, apart from a couple of mattresses strewn on its yellowish carpet. Ilaria sat down on the floor and propped herself against the wall. James handed her a bottle of beer then sat down next to her. She looked at him with a subdued, but pained expression and touched him lightly on the cheek.

'So many girls after you,' she said softly.

'You can forget about her,' he said. 'She was drugged to the eyeballs.'

'I know,' she replied. 'She was pathetic. But still … How am I going to keep you to myself?'

He took her hand gently and kissed it. Then he reached over and kissed her first on the cheek, then on her hair.

'You must be joking,' was all he could manage to say.

'But what about that girl in the churchyard?' she continued. 'This Hermione?'

'That was nothing like what just happened,' he replied. 'I think she genuinely thought she knew me. And she was sort of familiar.'

'She obviously knew what she was doing,' she remarked. 'A very convenient way to start a conversation with a desirable guy like you.'

_It wasn't like that_, he wanted to say, but he knew he would hurt her. Instead he looked straight into her eyes. Circled by eyeliner and with silvery lids, they were almost jarring to him. He touched her on the arm, just below where her sleeve ended, then ran his hand across her stomach, over the fabric of her dress, then down onto her leg. She looked at him for a moment, put her hands around his neck and closed her eyes. He ran his hand up her leg until it was well up her thigh. He reached in closer and kissed her hard on the lips. She kissed him back then drew slightly away.

'I want to too,' she whispered. 'But not here.'

He nodded, kissed her again, but briefly. Then they shifted their positions in unison until she was leaning fully against him, the both of them stretched out on the floor.

'I could fall asleep now,' she said softly against his chest.

'You can if you like,' he replied, twirling around a lock of her hair in his hand.

They had been lying quite still in the empty bedroom for some time when there was a soft knock at the door.

'Yes,' James called out groggily.

Armin stepped inside.

'There you are. Sorry to disturb you, I was getting a bit sick of some of the conversation down there.'

'No problem,' James replied. Armin eyed the empty beer bottles lying on the floor beside them.

'Did you want another drink?'

'Yeah, why not?' He turned to Ilaria, who was lying quite still in his arms. Her eyes were open but she seemed far away.

'Want a another drink?' he said gently.

'Uh …yeah … ok … thanks,' she murmured in reply. As he shifted his position he realised that his left leg had gone numb. He had to get up.

As they entered the hall he felt a blast of cold air hit him. The draft was emanating from one of the other bedrooms. He glanced through the open door and saw that the bedroom beyond it had a balcony where the cold air was coming from. He glanced back at Ilaria. She smiled at him from where she lay, but made no attempt to get up. The cold made him shiver, but he decided fresh air would do him good.

'Do you want to come outside for a bit?' he said.

'No thanks, I'm ok here,' Ilaria replied, then turned onto her side.

The balcony looked empty.

'Fancy a quick cigarette?' he said to Armin.

'Ok, but I'll go and get the drinks first,' Armin replied.

James nodded, crossed the bedroom and went out onto the balcony. He took his cigarettes out of his shirt pocket and lit one, leaning on the wrought iron railing and exhaling the smoke into the night air. From the second floor no light came from the yard apart from the glowing tips of cigarettes being smoked by a few party guests who had gone into the back garden. A few snatches of their muffled conversation drifted upwards.

Armin returned with the drinks. James swigged absentmindedly from his bottle of beer while Armin finished his cigarette. He wondered if Ilaria had fallen asleep, and whether she was still alone in the bedroom.

When they turned to go back inside, the way was blocked. It was the tall, dome-headed man, now wearing a long black trench coat. Standing a little way behind him was one of the boys he had seen earlier with the girl dressed in white. The tall man turned to his friend and gestured at them.

'Here are those magicians I was telling you about.'

The boy looked at them with the same strange, cold gaze but said nothing.

'Look, I never said we could do magic,' said James. 'I just said it deserves more respect than it's given credit for.'

The tall man didn't seem very impressed.

'I suppose if we throw you off the balcony, you'll be able to levitate back up here,' he remarked, stepping onto the balcony, his eyes glinting at the idea.

'Did you hear what I said?' said James in a louder voice.

'Yes,' said the man. 'You can't do magic, you just wish you could. In fact, you can't do anything in particular.'

'Yeah, in fact we really wish we were like you,' said James, feeling the anger rising up inside him. 'Sniffing around the butcher's shop floor for freshly spilled blood. Or roaming country lanes looking for dead animals that have been hit by cars.'

'Oh, I don't need to do any of those things,' replied the man coolly.

Quickly he drew his long knife from his coat and grabbed Armin by the arm, which he began to twist violently.

'Shame your girlfriend's not here with you. Perhaps she could stop me with the power of her mind.'

He raised the knife to Armin's arm and pressed the blade against it, causing a few drops of blood to spill out.

'What, you can't stop nature, oh great sorcerer?'

He dipped his finger in the trickle of blood and raised it to his lips.

'Nice Aryan blood. Should make for a good meal.'

He looked up at James, his teeth flecked with blood.

'See, this is nature up close: a predator and its prey.'

At that moment James felt a strange sensation in him, as if the blood had started flowing in a part of his brain till then shut off. He raised his hand: instantly the knife flew out of the man's hand and into his. The man let go of Armin's arm and stared at Harry, his expression a mixture of anger and curiosity.

'How did you do that?' he said.

_Yes, how did I do that?_

A word presented itself in his head, almost silently, like the hissing of a gas tap. _Magic._ He didn't want to say it out loud, as if it was his secret. _Some secret, everyone saw what just happened_.

'James?' Are you ok?'

It was Ilaria's voice. He turned and looked at her, the knife still in his hand. She stared at the knife, trying to work out what was going on, then at Armin, who was still dripping blood on the balcony.

'Isn't that his …' she stopped mid-sentence, her eyes nervously scrutinising James's face.

'Yes, it's his,' he replied in a strangely nonchalant voice. _As if it's a normal thing for me to move objects around without touching them_. He heard footsteps coming towards him. He veered around, expecting to see the dome-headed man coming for his knife. But he was still rooted to the spot, staring wide-eyed at his knife from the other side of the balcony. It was his friend, the cool-eyed boy who had been standing next to him. But he wasn't coming for him. Instead he pushed past James and walked away as if he had washed his hands of the man. His other companions were nowhere in sight. As he passed James, he shot him a curious little smile, not one of complicity, but somehow of encouragement. _I'd humiliate him a bit more if I were you_, the smile seemed to say.

'You want this back now, I suppose,' he said to the man, waving the knife in his direction. The man said nothing. James glanced down at the knife. Another whisper, as if in the back of his head. _Sectumsempra_. The word was written in black ink, in a taut, sloping hand, and seemed to be wrapped in a kind of black veil or mist. He didn't know what the word meant. But it conjured a picture for him. A picture of the knife slashing across the man's chest. _The conceited bastard. He needs shutting up_. He held the knife aloft and reached again for the strange word, but all of a sudden he had forgotten it. The black mist was gone, instead the back of his mind was enveloped in a kind of milky, opaque whiteness. He passed out.

* * *

Hermione broke out of her apparation. She plummeted down to earth, coming to a halt on the wooded bank of a small river. Through an opening in the intertwined alder branches she looked down at the water flowing in the moonlight. _It was me they were fighting over_. To try and stop her hands shaking she pressed one of them against the trunk of the nearest tree. _He was fighting for me_. Years earlier they had pitched their tent by a river that flowed through a forest. They had sat at its entrance as the evening got colder and colder, listening to the sound of the water and watching it through bare winter undergrowth, and the fear had seemed diminished. _Harry, where you go, I go_.

She turned away from the river, passing through the trees until she came to a clearing of uneven grass interspersed with bare earth. Throwing her bag to the ground, she crouched down and buried her head in her hands. She sat very still, apart from the slight swaying of her head as she cried silently into her hands. Finally she looked up at the night sky: the moon seemed to loom too close. She felt the soil loose beneath her hands, and scooped up a little of it. The dust was yellow and sandy. She reached into her bag and took out the wands. After contemplating the two of them, she lay Harry's on the ground and whispered _priori incantato_. Almost immediately the tip of the wand began to glow.

'Lumos?!' she said out loud, the disappointment and disgust palpable in her voice. At that moment she could almost have strangled Ginny herself. On the off-chance she repeated the charm, only to have the wand glow again. After a third attempt with the same result she gave up and picked up Harry's wand from the grass. She had visions of Ginny taking the wand out every evening since she had first asked her for it, casting the charm and then putting the wand away, chuckling spitefully. She sighed and cast the lumos charm herself. Light shot from both wands, only instead of being bold and warm, the light that emerged was scattered and quickly spent. She tried to cast a patronus from her wand, but it broke apart just as it was forming: every good memory she grasped at was tainted with regret. She looked around, and heard again the rush of the water and gentle swaying of the darkened trees. She shivered, now more from cold and exhaustion.

Using Harry's wand, she cast a pale circle around herself and muttered a few protective charms under her breath. _What are they for? To keep the badgers away?_ _There's no danger now, Hermione. It's not like back then._ Inside the circle, she stretched herself out on the soft turf and closed her eyes. She had arranged to stop at Demelza's after she left the Burrow, but she wasn't ready to see anyone just yet.

In her dream someone was playing with her hair. She couldn't see the person's face and didn't want to look around to see who it was. As she began to climb back out of sleep, the sensation became more palpable. _Someone really is touching my hair_. The next instant she was awake, twisting round and recoiling in the dark. The person withdrew a few steps and seemed to crouch beside her. Hermione's heart pounded as her eyes readjusted to the darkness. Through the gloom she found herself looking at a slightly mocking smile. She looked more closely and saw lips dry and pitted with cold sores, a face sheet white and emaciated, dark, dull eyes and hair that hung down lank and unwashed. Slowly it dawned on her that she was looking at herself.

'You have lovely hair,' said the apparition.

'Who are you?' said Hermione coldly.

'A messenger,' replied the apparition.

'Who sent you?'

'You did, in a way.'

'I don't believe you.'

'That's up to you.'

'Why do you look like me?'

'Why do you think?'

Hermione didn't answer. Smiling, the apparition went on in a desiccated tone:

'You're terribly hard to reach. So rarely do you slip into my orbit. You leave me with no nourishment. Look at the state of me.'

The apparition reached out a thin arm. The skin was pitted with bruises, discolorations and dried-up blood.

'What do you want?' said Hermione.

'I am to give you this,' said the apparition, pulling out a sharp, slender knife. The knife glinted in the moonlight, and Hermione could see that it was stained with blood.

'I don't want it,' replied Hermione.

'You've earned it,' said the apparition. 'You'll need it to go through with your betrayal.'

'What betrayal?'

'Which betrayal, you mean.'

'Which betrayal?'

'Yes. That I leave up to you. I don't need to tell you their names.'

'Whom am I meant to have betrayed?' said Hermione, her tone more fearful.

'Who have you betrayed, who are you betraying, who will you betray,' said the apparition in a singsong voice. 'It's not strictly my business. I'm just the messenger.'

'Where do you come from?' said Hermione.

'Ever the curious one,' replied the apparition. 'For your information I don't even know where I come from. I have no memories, or none that I would choose to remember. I've got my eyes wide open in the darkness. That's all. Now take this.'

The apparition thrust the knife into Hermione's hand, its icy cold hand brushing against hers. Then it was gone. She let go of the knife, and it dropped to the ground and lay there in the dust. _What on earth just happened to me?_ _Was that real?_ She shivered at the memory of the sickly, devastated face of her phantom twin. _Was it some weird manifestation of my conscience pricking me?_ _Was it some kind of reverse patronus, the sort you might conjure up when you felt really bad? Does such a spell even exist?_ She looked down at the ground again. The knife was still lying there, obviously real. The idea of a reverse patronus was nonsense. She crouched down and touched the knife again. It had a black handle that gleamed like obsidian. _Couldn't I just leave it here?_ _Whose blood is on it?_ The blood looked real. She touched it gently with the tip of her little finger and lifted it up to her face. Then without thinking she put it to her lips and tasted it. It had the usual metallic taste of blood. _What on earth am I doing?_ She sighed deeply, expelling her breath into the cold night air, as if that would cleanse her of the insanity that seemed to have grasped her. _It's got my fingerprints on it too. I can't leave it here. A child might find it._ She took the knife squarely in her hand, wiped it on the grass to clean the blood off and put it into her bag. Then she disapparated.

She followed the line of the river as it flowed through forest and open fields before passing into the outskirts of a large town. She apparated on a footpath that ran along by the river where it flowed along the edge of a suburban park. The river flowed in a concrete trench, marking the boundary between the scattered woods and undergrowth of the park and the gardens of suburban houses. The footpath eventually crossed the river on a low concrete bridge and continued past the garden fences belonging to the houses backing onto the park. She walked on through the night, her head bowed and her footsteps making almost no noise. After passing hundreds of different sections of fence, she stopped before a gate that seemingly had been sealed up. Looking around, she took out her wand and whispered an enchantment. A small door knocker appeared on the wooden gate. She knocked and waited. After a few moments, the gate opened and Demelza looked out in her dressing gown and pyjamas. She smiled at Hermione and beckoned her inside. For an instant she didn't dare step over the threshold into Demelza's back garden. Instead she stood in silence, her head slightly bowed and shivering.

'Can I ask you something first?' said Hermione, self-conscious of her voice in case it came out different. 'Do I look normal?'

Demelza squinted at her through the darkness.

'What do you mean?'

'I mean do I look healthy to you?'

'You look a bit pale and thin, but otherwise you look fine.'

'How pale and thin?'

'Just a little bit.'

She sighed with relief.

'Ok. Thanks.'

They crept through the garden and made their way towards Demelza's parents' house. The whitewashed back-end of the house loomed up mournfully over the ornamental trees in the garden.

'Did it go all right?' whispered Demelza.

'As well as could be expected,' said Hermione, a weak cough slipping out of her mouth.

They stood before the patio doors at the back of the house. Demelza squeezed Hermione's hand. _Thanks, I need it._ Her gaze ran nervously over her own reflection in the glass of the patio doors. The reflection was blurry and monochrome but it looked like her. Demelza slid the door open and they stepped inside.

'Did you get it?' asked Demelza.

Hermione nodded.

'What did Ginny and Ron say?'

'All sorts of things.'

They heard a sound come from inside the house.

'It's just the cat,' said Demelza, pointing at a black cat as it hurried past them into the garden.

'Quick, let's go upstairs.'

Demelza took Hermione by the arm and led her through the darkened living room into the hall. They padded up the carpeted stairs, which creaked occasionally, tiptoed along the landing and slipped through an open doorway into Demelza's bedroom.

A night light dimly lit the bedroom. Its decor could have been that of any teenage girl. Once Demelza had closed the door, Hermione reached into her bag and pulled out Harry's wand. Her hand trembled and she dropped the bag and a part of its contents spilled out onto the floor. There among the clothes, books and toiletries scattered on the carpet lay the knife. Hermione and Demelza pounced on the bag at the same time to clear up the mess.

'What's the knife for?' said Demelza.

'Umm, protection in the Muggle world?' said Hermione hesitantly, as she shoved the items back into her bag. Finally only Harry's wand was left on the floor. Hermione picked it up, looked at it in her hands for a moment then passed it to Demelza. Demelza took the wand and looked at it in her hand, perhaps assessing whether it was a wand worthy of Harry Potter. Then she passed it back to Hermione, who put it quickly back in her bag.

'Was it hard to get hold of?'

'Oh, it came at a high price,' said Hermione, with false cheerfulness.

'That bad?' said Demelza.

'Let's just say I'm kind of on my own for the time being.'

'Do you want to talk about it?'

'Not right now, thanks, I'm exhausted.'

Hermione sat down on Demelza's bed. Only then did she feel just how tired she was.

'Well, I've made up the spare room,' said Demelza. 'It's not very spacious, I'm afraid. My dad uses it as his 'office' normally.'

'That's fine,' said Hermione. She wasn't sure she wanted to sleep alone that night, but said nothing.

The spare room was at the end of the landing. It was a box room with a narrow window, furnished with a desk, computer and printer and lined with shelves. A sleeping bag had been spread out on the floor, where there was just enough space between the desk and the wall for one person to sleep. Demelza waited for her until she came back from a silent and furtive visit to the bathroom. She gave Hermione a quick hug then left the room. Once Hermione was alone she lay down in the sleeping bag.

She lay in the dark, staring at a smooth, blank section of the wall. The cacophonous din in her head from the night's events began to abate. The walls of the box room were cramped and grey in the darkness and her body was constricted by the sleeping bag, which acted like an excessively warm cocoon. The unfamiliar room was disorientating but tranquil. She almost dreaded the thought of ever having to leave it. '_You're my best friend_', she had told him once, without ever imagining how much bad blood her words could cause. And in spite of everything that had passed since then, however much she abhorred what he had done, the words wouldn't leave her.


	11. The last of Harry Potter - Chapter 11

11\. Caius

The next morning Demelza left early for work, leaving Hermione to make polite conversation with her mother over breakfast. Hermione sat slightly slouched over the large kitchen table, making heavy work of a cup of tea and a slice of brown toast and margarine, and looking up and answering politely whenever Demelza's mother asked her a question. The pleasant domesticity of Demeza's house was a little hard to take in her present state.

After breakfast, she took a train to London and spent the day wandering through the West End, mingling with shoppers and tourists, eating a sandwich on her own in a busy café, wandering into a few shops without buying anything. The anonymity of the non-wizarding world was a comfort to her.

As evening fell, she took the tube a few stops, following the swarm of people out of the tube station and onto the busy streets above. She quickly left the crowds behind and turned onto a side street. The street was quiet, apart from the sound of muffled music coming from a pub on the corner. A bouncer was on the door, in conversation with a man in an oversized baseball cap, who was talking loudly as he gulped down his pint. Neither of the men paid any attention to her as she walked past them and disappeared through a discreet door.

She rarely frequented the Leaky Cauldron, even less so on her own. The decor seemed to have undergone some sort of refurbishment since she had last been there, and seemed to have a rather sterile, vaguely modern look about it. Small groups of largely middle-aged wizards were sitting around tables, speaking in low voices. The atmosphere seemed surprisingly hushed. On a sign above the bar someone had scrawled 'Under new management'. She didn't remember hearing about that.

Demelza was in a corner of the pub, not far from the fireplace, examining her drink, a green coloured liquid in a tall, frosted glass, with a slightly bemused air. She looked up as Hermione was crossing the pub, waving excitedly with one hand and holding her drink with the other. Hermione sat down swiftly in front of her, at first putting her bag on the table then thinking better of it and pushing it down by her feet.

'Thanks for coming to see me off,' said Hermione.

'No problem. Did Mum look after you ok?'

'Yes, she was lovely. Say thanks to her again from me when you see her.'

'Oh no problem. She said you were very nice too, but you seemed a bit stressed.'

_Well I thought I did ok given how I spent the night before_.

A tired looking witch came over to their table. Hermione ordered a soft drink and told her she had reserved a room for the night. The witch nodded, and returned swiftly with the drink and her room key. Hermione sipped her drink and then slid down in her seat. She slouched for a few moments, seeming unable to gather her thoughts, and looked rather vacantly at Demelza. Then she sat up a little.

'How was work today?'

'Oh not too bad. Pretty busy.'

'Did you see …err … Ron or Ginny there?'

'I caught a glimpse of Ron at one point but didn't speak to him. I'm not sure whether he saw me or not. Ginny I didn't see at all.'

_Probably better for Demelza that way._

'Did anyone comment on my not being there?'

'I ran into Fuchsia, and she mentioned that she thought it wasn't like you, and asked me did I know why you'd suddenly gone on leave. I said I didn't.'

_As if Fuchsia knows what I'm like._

'And if you were wondering,' Demelza continued in a more confidential tone, 'I haven't heard any rumours going round.'

She was wondering of course.

'Well that's something I suppose. Sorry for getting you involved in this.'

'What do you mean?' said Demelza. 'I sort of got you involved in it, really.'

Hermione smiled.

'Oh yes. I suppose you did, in a way.'

They sipped their drinks and Hermione went on.

'So tell me about Ilaria. Ilaria De Angelis, that's her name, isn't it?'

_And what a charming name it is too._

'That's right. She was in my year at Hogwarts. She's Italian.'

She knew that of course, and also that Ilaria had been in Slytherin.

'She was chaser on the Slytherin quidditch team,' Demelza added.

'Did she play against Harry and Ron?'

'No, she didn't make the team the same year I did, but we had flying lessons together, and I could see she was a better flyer than me. I don't think she had the right connections to make the Slytherin team.'

Hermione tried to wrack her brains in an effort to picture Ilaria De Angelis in Slytherin quidditch uniform. But trying to visualise Slytherin quidditch teams of yesteryear was an almost entirely fruitless task for her. She had just never paid enough notice to them.

'She's a really good quidditch player,' added Demelza, who was no slouch herself. 'She was part of the Slytherin team that won the Quidditch Cup a couple of years ago.'

She remembered that all right, although she hadn't been at the game. Ron, Harry, Ginny and George had all gone up to Hogwarts as special guests to watch Gryffindor versus Slytherin in the final. The fact that Slytherin had won the game without even cheating had made it worse, so they told her. After the result Ron had been in a foul mood for the best part of a week. The only positive was the report that a drunken Draco Malfoy had crashed his broom into the River Avon during the revelling that followed the victory.

'Yes, I know. Did you know her well?'

'Fairly well. For someone from Slytherin, she was quite friendly. Sometimes she played a bit dirty on the quidditch field, but off the field she seemed nice. She was friendly to me because we were both into quidditch. Some of the other Slytherins tried to have a go at her for being too friendly with the other houses, but she paid no attention to them. So I heard, her mother's a Muggle and her father's a wizard, but her parents split up or something and her father wanted to take her out of Italy so he sent her to Hogwarts. For her own protection or something. Apparently they organised a witch hunt in the village she lived in.'

'A witch hunt?'

A couple of heads turned on the table nearest to them.

'It's a drinking game,' said Hermione, and the wizards turned away.

'Seems crazy, doesn't it?' Demelza continued in a lower voice. 'I don't know what actually happened, or how close she came to being… well, I don't exactly know what they do in witch hunts. Didn't think that sort of thing still went on.'

'You'd be surprised,' said Hermione. 'Not only is it still going on, it's actually on the rise.'

Demelza shuddered and fell silent. She took another sip of her green drink and went on.

'Given what happened, and what with her being in Slytherin, it's all the more surprising that she didn't hate muggles. When the troubles started, she kept pretty quiet, while others were shooting their mouths off about mudbloods this and Death Eaters that. She never supported Voldemort though.'

'That was brave of her,' said Hermione. She leaned across the table.

'Do you think she could've done it?' she asked.

'You mean confound Harry because she was in love with him?'

There was something in Demelza's expression that made Hermione think she wasn't completely insensitive to Harry's charms.

'In love with him or obsessed with him,' she replied quickly. 'It's happened before. Did you know Romilda?'

'Romilda Vane?'

'That's right.'

'She was the year above me I think. She was all right.'

'Well, she tried to do exactly that. Confound Harry, I mean. Though admittedly she didn't go so far as to try and wipe his mind.'

'Well, if you wiped Harry's mind,' replied Demelza quickly, 'he wouldn't know who he was and would stop doing the sort of things that made him famous, and so he wouldn't be as interesting any more. What's the point of being Harry Potter's girlfriend if he doesn't know he's Harry Potter?'

'That's true,' said Hermione, smiling to herself.

'On the other hand,' said Demelza, apparently still in the same train of thought, 'maybe she doesn't care about the fame. If it's just his face and his body she likes, she can wipe his memory and still get them.'

'Quite,' remarked Hermione. 'And not only that: if she wipes his memory, she gets to keep him to herself, all the time revelling in the fact that she's the only one who knows who he really is.'

She stopped there. They were getting too far from the point.

'Well, let's say for argument's sake that it is her,' she said. Demelza nodded and looked at her, her head resting on her hands. 'I wonder whether she needed accomplices.'

'You mean Caius and Henoc,' said Demelza.

'Possibly.'

'They were on the Slytherin quidditch team too.'

The names were well known to her. In the infamous match when Slytherin beat Gryffindor, Henoc Lutumba had broken the record for the most points ever scored by a beater. George Weasley had lamented over this particular statistic numerous times. And Caius Hanmer, the team's seeker in that match, had managed to win the match for Slytherin without even catching the golden snitch. Instead, he had ducked out of the way just as the Snitch was flying towards his back, making it fly straight into the hands of the unsuspecting Gryffindor seeker. Slytherin were far enough in front to win the match. Harry had been particularly impressed. _He heard the Snitch behind him. He knew he didn't have time to turn around and catch it, and he must have guessed, or gambled, that it would follow the same trajectory straight into our seeker's hands and win them the match.'_She could see Harry standing in the Burrow, his eyes wide and flashing as he explained it to her.

'They were different from the rest,' Demelza added. 'Like Ilaria.'

'They were also with Harry the night he disappeared,' remarked Hermione.

'So I heard,' said Demelza.

'So,' said Hermione, twirling a lock of her hair at her shoulder, 'did you manage to contact them?'

Demelza leaned in a little closer.

'Henoc's in Paris apparently. But I managed to get hold of Caius. You know Meredith Dulse?'

'I know the name,' said Hermione. 'She was in Gryffindor.'

She remembered a lithe, lively girl with unruly blonde hair in the Gryffindor dormitory.

'That's right. She's Caius Hanmer's cousin. Or second cousin, or something like that. She put me in contact with him.'

'And did he agree to …?'

'He said he'd meet us here tonight.'

Hermione glanced quickly around the bar, just in case Caius Hanmer had come in while they were talking, but she couldn't see anyone who looked like what she expected him to look like. She could only remember seeing him once in person, in the aftermath of the Battle of Hogwarts, being commended as one of a handful of members of Slytherin who had refused to leave the school during the battle, instead staying to help in the fight. Ilaria and Henoc had been among them too. She vaguely remembered a small, smirking boy with black hair, but he must have only been fourteen or fifteen at the time. The most recent picture of him she had seen was from the Daily Prophet report on the Gryffindor-Slytherin quidditch match. He didn't work in the Ministry. In fact she wasn't sure what he had been doing since leaving Hogwarts.

Demelza scrutinised her watch.

'I suppose he'll be here soon.'

Hermione chewed her lip, reached for her drink then pushed it away a little instead.

'Is he the sort of person who tends to be late, do you think?'

Demelza shrugged.

'I don't know him that well.'

After a few moments she added:

'Do you have some kind of tactic in mind for him?'

'Haven't really thought of one, to be honest,' Hermione replied.

'Do you think there's any chance of him admitting to being in on cursing Harry?'

'I don't know,' said Hermione rather disconsolately. 'I'm probably just grasping at straws anyway.'

Demelza's gaze flashed across the room to a point behind her, probably towards the door.

'It's him,' she said in a soft voice. She looked up and half-waved across the bar.

Hermione turned quickly in her seat and followed Demelza's gaze. She recognised him straight away. He was taller and his face was half-hidden under stubble, but the pale, laughing eyes and permanent smirk were the same as she remembered. He had on a grey woollen jacket that hung open and a black scarf was draped loosely around his neck, giving him a rather dishevelled appearance. He had a kind of youthful naivety about him. He could almost have turned up to take Demelza on a date. She turned back as he approached.

'Hi Caius,' said Demelza brightly as he reached their table.

'Demelza, good to see you again,' he said courteously, hovering behind a free chair. As he turned towards Hermione he almost seemed to take a little bow.

'Ah, Hermione Granger,' he said. 'Harry Potter's better half.'

'What on earth do you mean?' Hermione exclaimed. 'I'm nothing of the sort.'

A sort of confused silence descended on the three of them.

'Why don't you sit down,' said Hermione stiffly, nodding at the chair in front of Caius. He shot her a sheepish smile and quickly sat down.

'Sorry,' he said in a placatory tone. 'I was being facetious. What I mean is that whenever I've asked Harry about any of his famous exploits, he always said: _it wasn't really me. It was Hermione who did all the hard work. I was just in the right place at the right time_.'

Hermione coloured a little at this, but kept a severe expression on her face.

'It was supposed to be a compliment, but I blew it,' he concluded contritely.

'Well, thanks for the effort at least,' she replied, relaxing her scowl somewhat at the same time.

The tired witch came back to take Caius's order. He ordered something rather incomprehensible, but the witch seemed to know what he meant and went away.

'So is this one of your regular haunts?' asked Hermione drily, imagining that he had just ordered his usual.

'Oh no,' he replied quickly, seemingly aghast at the idea. 'Is it one of yours?'

'Haven't been in here for ages,' Hermione replied.

'A few of us come in here after work sometimes,' said Demelza.

'Where do you work?' asked Caius, his tone half-curious, half-suspicious.

'The Ministry,' replied Demelza with a knowing, apologetic air, as if she were admitting it was a cop-out.

'You …uh … work at the Ministry too, is that right?' he asked, looking coyly across at Hermione.

'That's right.'

'Much fun is it?'

She narrowed her eyes and scrutinised his face to look for any signs of irony. She couldn't see any.

'I'm not sure it's supposed to be fun.'.

'Probably not. But it's funny how nearly everyone ends up working there, don't you think?'

Hermione's first instinct was to dispute this, but he had a point.

'There are plenty of other places you can work if the Ministry doesn't appeal to you.'

For a moment she considered trying to list a few to him, but thought better of it.

'So where do _you_ work?' she asked instead.

'Nowhere at the moment,' he replied. 'But I'll probably get something arranged soon.'

From what she had heard, Caius came from a well-to-do wizarding family, so he was probably under no financial pressure to find work. She decided not to quiz him any further on that point.

'So if you don't hang out at the Leaky Cauldron,' cut in Demelza, 'where do you go?'

'Oh, more out of the way places,' he replied.

'What like?' asked Demelza, who seemed genuinely interested.

'Well, my local back home above all,' he replied. 'But if I'm in London, the best place is the Clerk of Orleans.'

'Ooh I've heard it's quite cool there,' said Demelza.

'Cool, you say? I'm not sure about that,' said Caius, obviously displeased at the idea that his favourite hangout might be becoming fashionable. Hermione felt her foot start to tap under the table. This wasn't the time to be discussing the best spots in London for wizards to get drunk in.

'Anyway, Caius,' she said firmly, feeling rather awkward about using his first name, 'I'm sure you know why we wanted to speak to you.'

'I haven't seen him since he disappeared,' replied Caius flatly after little more than a moment's hesitation.

_Very categorical, he is_.

'You were one of the last people to see him, though,' said Hermione.

'So I was apparently.'

He paused, looking at them with interest. The smile on his face seemed to express permanent irony.

'Have you decided to start looking for him then, after all this time?'

_What took me so long, do you mean? _

Hermione glanced at Demelza then back at Caius.

'Uh … yes.'

'Why now?'

She didn't want to reveal the real reason yet.

'Because it's not normal that he should disappear and send no sign to anyone' she replied. 'Because someone has to find out what really happened to him.'

She swallowed hard at the end of her sentence, a little taken back by her own tone.

'You're right,' said Caius, somehow managing to adopt a serious look. 'It isn't normal.'

Hermione paused until she was sure she was going to continue in a more even tone.

'I don't suppose you noticed anything strange that night.'

A smile flickered across his lips. _Is that a smile of guilt or is he just laughing because what I said sounds so clichéd and ridiculous_?

'Not really. We were just having a laugh. Harry was on good form. He pretty much blasted me out of the sky.'

'You know the Ministry's aware of what you get up to,' said Hermione drily. 'I'm surprised none of you have died by now.'

Caius shrugged.

'Ah well, then the Ministry will know that our little group has ceased to exist for the best part of a year. We only met once more after Harry disappeared.'

'You, Ilaria De Angelis and Henoc Lutumba?'

He smiled.

'You're so well informed over at the Ministry.'

'I don't know about your group from the Ministry,' she retorted. 'Harry told me himself. I'm not on some Ministry mission, if that's what you're thinking. Harry was a very good friend.'

Talking about him in the past tense seemed wrong.

Caius picked up his glass, which contained a viscous black liquid, and took a mouthful.

'Too sweet,' he said, grimacing. 'I believe you. I suppose you are the most likely person to go looking for him. I don't suppose that Ginny Weasley would after … well, you know better than me.'

She certainly did.

It was Demelza who broke the silence.

'So you haven't been in touch with Henoc and Ilaria recently?'

Caius shook his head.

'Henoc's gone to Paris to study. Ilaria's got some new boyfriend and has pretty much dropped out of sight.'

'Has she?' said Hermione, trying to play down her interest. 'Do you know who this boyfriend is?'

'Never met him,' said Caius.

He drank another mouthful of the dark liquid. Then he looked at the girls with a determined air.

'So, do you have any … what do you call them … leads?'

Hermione chewed on her lower lip. _Should I tell him_? He had already given them quite a lot of useful information, and with very little probing at that. She glanced at Demelza, then at Caius with what felt to her like a glassy-eyed, vacant look on her face.

'I've spoken to him,' she said finally.

'Really?' Caius replied. 'That's interesting. But surely it means he isn't missing then?'

'He … doesn't know who he is.'

He looked quizzically at her. _Fair enough, it does sound pretty odd_.

'We think someone put a memory charm on him,' Demelza put in.

Hermione scanned his face for any kind of a tell. Nothing.

'I see now,' he said. 'But why would someone do something like that?'

'Well, don't you think Harry still has enemies?' said Hermione quickly.

'I'm sure he does,' Caius retorted. 'But why a memory charm? Why not just curse him when his back's turned?'

'I don't know,' said Hermione. 'Isn't it somehow more humiliating this way?'

'Could be.'

'He doesn't even know he's a wizard,' commented Demelza.

'What, he's playing at being a dackle?'

'A what?' Hermione and Demelza exclaimed in unison.

'Sorry, I mean a muggle.'

Hermione glanced at Caius's black drink and wondered what on earth was in the glass.

'So what are you going to do?' he asked, after taking another swig from it.

'Well … we're not exactly sure. But we think we know where he works.'

The Ministry kept a record of occult bookshops, but Hermione hadn't been in work to consult it, so she had had to fall back on checking the internet. The only occult bookshop on Exmouth Market was called Vlaminck's Esoteric and Occult. That had to be the place.

'I thought I'd go there tomorrow. What do you think, Demelza?'

'Sounds like a good idea,' said Demelza. 'I could sneak out of work if you like.' The look on her face suggested that she'd rather not.

'No, don't worry, Demelza,' Hermione replied.

Caius leaned forward a little in his seat. The smirk was back on his face.

'So what are you going to do, go over to where he works and de-jinx him under the counter?'

Hermione looked at him drily.

'Much as I appreciate the directness of your plan, I think the consequences would be dangerous. Memory charms are tricky things: they depend a lot on the intentions of the caster and on the psychological state of the recipient. And in any case, it's not just a question of flourishing your wand, saying _Finite incantatem_ and then going home. If I just go up to him and blast him with a counter-curse, the result would either be nothing at all, or that I do serious damage to his psyche.'

'So are you just going to walk into his shop and hope that if he sees you often enough he'll remember you?'

'That would probably have about as much chance as working as de-jinxing him under the counter,' she retorted. 'But for the time being, I hadn't planned on doing much more than trying to gather a little more information about what he's been doing.'

But maybe he would start to recognise her if he saw her again. He had nearly recognised her the first time.

'Would it help if I came with you?' Caius suggested suddenly.

'Err … that's nice of you to offer, but I was thinking of going over there on my own.'

They looked at each other in silence for a few moments. Finally a smile broke out on his face.

'Ok, fair enough. But will you keep me posted? I don't like thinking of Harry out there not being … Harry.'

It was about the most earnest thing he had said all evening.

'Thanks, I will,' she replied.

'Still,' he continued, 'I have got plenty of time on my hands at the moment, so if there's something else I could help out with...'

Hermione smiled in spite of herself.

'I could try and get hold of Ilaria for instance.'

_He knows that we suspect her_.

'That may be necessary at some point,' she replied after a moment's hesitation. 'But not just yet.'

'As you wish,' he said quietly.

'But thanks,' said Hermione. 'We will let you know.'

He stuck his hand out across the table and she shook it. He then proceeded to do the same with Demelza.

'Should we exchange numbers or something?' Demelza suggested.

'What, mobile phone numbers, do you mean?' asked Caius with a wink. 'Got to move with the times, eh?'

It was unclear whether he was addressing this exhortation to himself or surreptitiously making fun of them.

'I'll send you an owl instead, shall I?' said Hermione in a rather withering tone.

'That'll be fine,' said Caius. 'What would all the poor owls do if all wizards started using telephones?'

'You've got a point there,' replied Hermione.

He grinned again, for what seemed to Hermione like the hundredth time that evening. After he had left to meet friends in the Clerk of Orleans, Demelza had asked her whether she intended to involve him in looking for Harry. _I seriously doubt it_ had been her reply. But later, as she sat in her room upstairs at the Cauldron, listening to the cackling laughter of witches in the next room as they got ready for a night out, _I seriously doubt it_ became first _it's probably a bad idea_ before ending up as _I'm almost certainly going to regret this_.


	12. The last of Harry Potter - Chapter 12

12\. Esoteric and occult

His head was sideways on the table when he came to, his eyes staring across the room. A pain shot through his head as he raised it from the table, but died away as quickly as it had come, replaced by a numbness that wasn't all that much better. He pulled himself upright, his hand slipping once on the table's polished surface. He looked down at his hand. _Last time I saw it I was holding a knife. Why would I have a knife?_ A memory began to form, but he pushed it away. _I wanted to stab someone._ He remembered the confrontation on the balcony, the man's relentless and inexplicable hatred. He remembered the cold, mocking eyes of the teenaged boy standing next to him, and the girl all dressed in white, drunk or high, or just crazed. He remembered Armin, but struggled to remember his own name. He only saw his hands. _The hands that held the knife, the hands that choked a girl_. He saw a flash of light, one that he thought was going to elucidate everything, but the next moment it was gone.

He got up from the table and moved slowly across the living room floor, the rough carpet brushing against the soles of his feet. It was at that point he noticed that he was in pyjamas. He was making for the fireplace, to look at the framed photographs propped on the mantelpiece. He snatched the first of them and looked down at it in his hand: a dark-haired girl of about ten in a long dress stood on a stone balcony, a green, forested hillside rising up behind it. The balcony and the hillside looked foreign to him: somewhere in Italy was his first thought. He put the first photograph back and took down the second: it was him, sitting in a bar, a girl next to him, her arm over his shoulder. _An Irish pub in Greenwich_. It was the same girl as in the first photograph, only ten years later.

'James?'

A voice called to him from the door. _Her voice._ She was across the room in an instant. Putting one arm around his waist, she caught the corner of the photo frame with her free hand. She looked down at the two of them in the photo then turned to look at him, smiling a warm, discreet smile. She was wearing a white rustic blouse and blue jeans. Like him, she was barefoot. _She doesn't often wear white. It suits her._ Without saying anything, she kissed him on the cheek and ran her hand up and down his back.

'How are you feeling?' she asked gently.

'Better,' he replied. 'But confused.'

She slid the photo out of his hand and put it back on the mantelpiece. Then she pushed herself against him and put her arms around his neck.

'That's normal,' she murmured, running one of her hands through the back of his hair.

'I don't think I even know what day it is.'

He put his hands around her waist.

'The party was the day before yesterday,' she replied. 'You remember the party, don't you?'

He did. Up to a point.

'How's Armin?'

'He's fine. He's at work. He's giving you some time off.'

'How did I …?'

'We stayed overnight at the house where the party was. My friend Paola found us a quiet room.'

'I passed out.'

'You woke up from time to time, but mostly you were unconscious. Sleeping.'

She reached up and kissed him once, very softly on the mouth.

'I was causing trouble.'

She shook her head.

'It wasn't you, it was that idiot looking for a fight.'

'What happened after I…?'

'Nothing. He left pretty quickly.'

'Who was he?'

'Oh, an irrelevance. He's no friend of Paola and Juan. A friend of a friend or something. They didn't even invite him. It's a shame you didn't have a chance to speak to them; you would have liked them. Juan even gave us a lift home the next day.'

He had a vague memory of being driven in a car through unfamiliar neighbourhoods of London. Passing in and out of consciousness.

'You must pass on my thanks, and tell them I'm sorry.'

'There's nothing to be sorry about, my darling.'

Locking her hand in his, she led him back to the sofa. He slumped down into its soft fabric, his legs splayed wide apart. Ilaria hopped up onto the seat next to him and sat facing him side-on, running her hand along the nape of his neck. He stared straight ahead then started to clench his fists.

'What's wrong, my love?' asked Ilaria.

'I've done something terrible,' he said plainly.

'What? When?' Her other hand was on his cheek in an instant, turning his face so that it faced hers.

'I don't know the details,' he said, the tautness weakening in her gaze. 'I don't know who I did it to, or when. But I'm guilty of something. I hurt a woman. Or worse.'

Her eyes were dark, searching his face for some trace of the details he didn't have.

'I don't believe you could do such a thing. Not those gentle hands.'

_But I'm sure I did_.

'You shouldn't be so certain. I was on the street, remember? Whatever I was running from couldn't have been something good.'

'You were trying to get away from some pain in your life, I'm sure of that.'

She pulled him against her chest and wrapped her hands around his shoulders and head. The fabric of her blouse had a freshly washed smell about it. As she held him, one of her fingernails caught against his skin, gouging and scratching a little. The tiny tremor of pain it caused seemed almost like a relief.

'I have an idea, James,' she was saying. 'A proposal. I think it's time we went on a little holiday. What about Paris?'

'Umm… I don't know.'

'You said you haven't been there before, didn't you?'

He supposed he must have said that. He certainly couldn't remember ever going there.

'No, I haven't been,' he replied, with put-on certainty.

'It'll do you so much good,' Ilaria went on. 'And I have a friend we can stay with.'

'Can we afford it?'

'I have some money saved up. It'll be more than worth it. You need to take advantage of this time-off. London has too many bad memories for you.'

That seemed to be true. Only they were bad memories he couldn't remember.

* * *

Leaving a concealed exit of the Ministry of Magic behind her, Hermione followed the winding course of Mount Pleasant until it spewed her out onto Roseberry Avenue just where it met Exmouth Market. She had paid a brief visit to the Ministry, meeting Demelza in one of its quiet outer precincts, before heading off on the mission she had set herself. She was accustomed to taking the back streets in that part of London, where some of the Ministry's minor entrances lay hidden and where she would often come across wizards hurrying past on Ministry or personal business.

She slackened her pace as she stepped onto Exmouth Market, relieved to be away from the traffic, and allowed herself to gaze at the shop fronts as she passed by. It was mid-morning: people were at coffee in snug bars, office workers passing quickly on errands, workmen seemingly lounging on street corners.

Reaching a broad, brick-fronted church, she turned and looked at the shop fronts on the other side of the street. _It should be about here_. In among the bars and boutiques was a cramped and rather stale shop window, incongruously down-at-heel in comparison with what surrounded it. She crossed the street and looked in the shop window. Arranged on a dusty, velvet cloth was a display of ancient-looking books and objects. She looked up at the name above the shop: _Vlaminck's (esoteric and occult)_. She pushed against the heavy door and entered the shop, her heart beating a little faster.

Inside was a narrow space that seemed to go back a long way, with several rows of shelves crammed into it. An unidentifiable odour pervaded the space. There were few customers browsing in the shop. Hermione glanced about her and saw a thin, perspiring young man, who seemed not to want to be seen as he ran his eyes over titles on a shelf, a tall dark-haired woman with a faraway expression, and a severe-looking man with a shaven head who scowled at her when she caught his eye. Looking around the end of an aisle, she spied the shop counter. But instead of seeing Harry, or James Black as he called himself, she saw a tall, gangling young man with long, straw blonde hair, who seemed to be peering down at something on the counter top in front of him.

She started to examine a display of Egyptian artefacts, without much interest, before coming across a section on divination. _I wonder if Professor Trelawney ever comes in here_. Smiling to herself at the thought, it struck her that there was something in the shop's stale but vaguely exotic atmosphere that was reminiscent of divination class at Hogwarts. She made her way among the bookshelves and display cabinets, glancing at random at the titles of books. Some struck her as preposterous and completely misguided, whereas other works she recognised from the library at Hogwarts. She even found a copy of _The Dreaming Mage_. She took it down off the shelf and opened it to a random page. After reading a few lines, it occurred to her that maybe it didn't matter if books by real wizards were in muggle bookshops. Muggles who believed in magic weren't taken seriously, and those who didn't could read an entire book by J. Brabizon Barrett and think it was either nonsense or metaphor.

The customers she had seen so far in the shop struck her as people with no connection to the real world of magic. She wondered what they were looking for: groping in the dark for something they weren't sure existed, or else convinced of ideas that were a sad parody of the truth. She was about to make for the counter when she spied a trilby hat passing in front of her from the other side of the aisle. She kept her eyes fixed on the hat until its wearer emerged from behind the bookshelf. She saw a shortish, middle-aged man in a pinstripe shirt, denim waistcoat and bottle green trousers. _So wizards come here after all._ She followed the probable wizard with her gaze until he headed into a tight corner of the shop and passed out of sight. She started to follow him when she realised she knew who he was: a Ministry wizard named Carter. She'd even seen him talking once to Ron's father.

Leaving Carter to browse the shelves in peace, she made her way to the counter. The tall blonde man was still at his post, apparently looking through some sort of catalogue.

'Excuse me,' she began.

He looked up. He was very fair-skinned, with flushed red cheeks and piercing pale blue eyes. He had his arm in a sling. _Not a wizard_.

'Yes?' he said.

'I'm looking for James Black.'

A sharp, quizzical look flashed in his eyes.

'You're out of luck,' he said in what sounded to her like a rather ironic tone. 'He's not at work today. He's on holiday.'

'Holiday?' repeated Hermione, immediately suspicious. She coughed ceremoniously.

'Do you know when he'll be back?'

'I expect him back next week,' came the reply.

'On Monday?'

He frowned slightly.

'No, not Monday. He's gone away for a 'long weekend'. I don't expect to see him here before Wednesday.'

She looked down at the counter, considering what to do next. She couldn't bear to wait that long.

'He's gone away with Ilaria, I suppose?' she asked. Her voice came out rather more waspishly than she had intended.

He put down the catalogue and stared at her with an odd expression.

'Well, I suppose he has,' he replied after a moment's hesitation. _Evasive, definitely evasive_.

'And did he say where he was going?'

'Yes, on holiday,' came the deadpan reply.

'I'm not checking up on him or anything,' she said, changing tack. 'I bumped into him the other day, for the first time in ages, in fact. I work quite near here, so I thought I'd drop by to see where he worked. This place sounded quite interesting.'

The man digested this information in silence.

'If you like, you can leave him a message,' he replied at last, in a disinterested voice. 'I'll see that he gets it.' He folded his arms. 'Or come back next week if you like.'

'No, I don't have a message,' she said, deciding on the off-chance it was better not to leave a name.

'Well, feel free to have a browse. In my humble opinion there are plenty of interesting things in here.'

She shot him a brief, ironic smile, which he kind of mirrored then went back to his catalogue. _An unmitigated disaster_. She took a step away from the counter and looked around her for a moment. Then she went back to it.

'You have a pretty decent Mesopotamian section,' she began, with an altered tone. 'Do you have _Incantations of Eanna_?

He looked up swiftly from his catalogue.

'I wish we did,' he said rapidly, a look of renewed interest in his eyes. 'That's not a title that many people come in asking for.'

'Oh well, I was just curious. I had a look through a copy once in a library, and it seemed fairly interesting. I've never seen it anywhere since. My understanding is that it's the earliest known …'

'Book of spells.'

'That's right.'

'Where was this library where you happened to look through a copy?'

She smiled to herself. Quite possibly she was in one of the few places in the country where the knowledge she had gleaned over the years would be appreciated.

'It was my school library.'

'Your school library?' His eyes bulged wider. 'What school did you go to?'

'Oh, it's not a well-known school or anything. Just a boarding school. One that's a very long way from here. Rare books can end up in the most unlikely places, you know.'

'_Eanna_ is more than rare.'

She looked with curiosity at the wide-eyed expression on his face. _He knows his stuff after all_. She was quite glad she had given him the benefit of the doubt. _He really is on the threshold_. The title he knew as _Incantations of Eanna_ must be the translation from the ancient Greek, which was itself a translation of a translation. The translation was sound, but because it was written by a non-magician, it gave only a sort of rough gloss of the incantations. There was a different translation in Hogwarts library, one done by a real wizard, one who had seen the text in cuneiform.

She looked away, glancing around the shop again.

'Does the name Vlaminck have anything to do with the Flemish esotericist Lucas Vlaminck?'

Now she really had him.

'Lucas Vlaminck founded this shop. He came to London from Antwerp in 1693 and settled here. His original shop was on Crutched Friars.'

'Wasn't he chased out of Antwerp on suspicion of witchcraft?'

He raised his eyebrows and examined her in silence.

'There was a lot of it going around at the time,' he replied laconically. 'Where did you say you knew James from?'

She paused for a moment.

'I think we used to know each other years ago, but I can't be sure. But I want to find out.'

He looked curiously at her.

'It would be quite something if you did,' he replied. 'He doesn't know anyone from his past.'

'So he told me.'

She paused for a moment.

'So Ilaria's not from his past?'

He shrugged.

'I don't think they've known each other for more than a year.'

His eyes drifted to the catalogue on the counter.

'Did you say you didn't want to leave a message?'

'No … Maybe I'll come back another time. It's not out of my way to come here.'

'Suit yourself.'

She started to step away from the counter again then hesitated.

'Has he been working here long?'

'Getting on for a year.'

'I bet he's an asset to this place.'

'He's a strange one,' he replied. 'Claims to know nothing about the occult but from time to time comes out with something that only someone in the field would know.'

'Oh, I expect he's just being modest,' said Hermione, folding her arms.

'Is that so?'

She nodded and smiled at him.

'What about you? Have you been in the field long?'

'Born and raised in it. I'm a direct descendant of Lucas Vlaminck himself,' he said proudly.

'That is impressive,' said Hermione. 'So this is a family business.'

He nodded.

'I'm Armin. Armin Vlaminck.'

He held out his hand and she shook it.

'I'm Hermione.'

'Pleased to meet you, Hermione.'

At that moment, the wizard she had spotted earlier shuffled to the counter and thrust a musty-smelling hardback at Armin, muttering 'Excuse me,' to Hermione. He glanced at Hermione, a look of vague recognition on his face. She thought he seemed rather embarrassed to be seen in Armin's shop.

'I'm sorry, I've been keeping you from your customers,' she said, bowing out gracefully and turning to leave.

'Is there anything else I can help you with?' he called out after her.

'No thanks, that's all,' she called out over her shoulder.

'Well, come back anytime! I'll tell James you dropped by.'

She walked slowly back down the narrow shop, pausing for a moment to look at a yellowed skull in a glass display case that looked like something from Borgin & Burkes. She had just opened the door to leave when she felt a tap on the shoulder. It was Armin, who had run from the counter to catch up with her.

'If you've got a few minutes I want to show you something.'

She looked at him with surprise.

'All right then.'

He put up a sign in the shop window that read 'back in ten minutes'. Then he led her into the back room. The room was even more cramped than the shop itself, piled with boxes and books, a layer of dust covering everything. Armin went first to a drawer and took out two pairs of white gloves. He put on one pair and gave the other to her. He lifted one pile of books to one side and put it on the floor, revealing a small wall safe. He briskly entered the combination, and took out an ancient looking manuscript.

'It isn't _Eanna_,' he said in an animated voice, 'but it's the closest thing we have to it. This is the most valuable book in our possession.'

Carefully he handed her the manuscript, which was bound in leather. There was no title on the binding, so she opened the book. The title was written inside:

_The Testament of Sie_.

Her eyes widened in surprise.

'This _is_ rare,' she said. 'I suppose it's a recent translation.'

'Seventeenth century is relatively recent, yes,' he replied, apparently with no trace of irony. 'Translated by Lucas Vlaminck himself from an earlier Latin version, based on an earlier Greek version that was in turn translated from Armenian. No one's ever seen the original of course.'

'_Sie_ is not the name of a person,' said Hermione as she scanned the text. 'It means _priest_ in Urartian.'

'You do know your stuff,' said Armin.

'I've read about this book, but I've never seen a copy.'

She looked carefully through the pages.

'You know what it's about though?' he said.

'I only know what I've read about it,' she replied. 'As far as I know it's the account of a sorcerer's journey through the spirit world. How he enters it, and whose dreams he inhabits. Supposedly you find echoes of it in the processes behind shamanistic journeys.'

'There's more to it than that,' Armin replied. 'The book talks about something called the Seven-Pointed Circle. Inhabiting the dreams of other people is just one of the levels of it. The other levels cover a whole range of magical techniques. Theoretically at least.'

Hermione looked intently at him.

'And have you tried to master them?' she asked in a soft but commanding voice, the book open in her hand. He held her gaze for a few moments then looked away.

'They're written in a sort of code. It's become rather impenetrable as a result of passing through I don't know how many translations. A bit like _Eanna_.'

She handed the book back to him.

'What do you make of it?' he asked. 'Do you think it's possible?'

'Well, like you say, the meaning's got lost in translation,' she replied. 'But if you knew what the original incantations were meant to say, who knows? You could try them at least.'

_The incantations in Eanna can be done_. But she could hardly tell him that.

'Anyway,' she continued in as much nonchalance as she could manage, 'it's not as if you could get this book out of the library, take it home and after a couple of weeks' study hope to be travelling the spirit world.'

Armin nodded enthusiastically.

'In the book it says that it took years to perfect it,' he said. 'And once the practitioner is in the dreams of their host, they can visit the dreams of others whose image is particularly vivid in that person's mind.'

They were interrupted by the sound of someone hammering on the door of the shop. Armin closed the book and put it back in the safe.

'Duty calls,' he said.

'Yes it does,' she replied. 'Thanks, Armin, for showing me that.'

'No problem,' he replied. 'You seem like someone who would appreciate it.'

They exited the back room together.

'To tell you the truth it's a bit annoying that James has gone off on holiday on such short notice,' Armin remarked.

'Oh, it was short notice, was it?' Hermione asked innocently.

'I mean, fair enough he needed a couple of days off to recover after the party but not this much.'

'One of those parties, was it?' she asked, rather disapprovingly.

'Probably, but it wasn't what you're thinking,' he replied, unlocking the door to the shop. 'There was this weird incident and then he just passed out.'

'Really? What weird incident?'

But by now the customer who had obviously just been hammering on the door was already barging past them into the shop, giving Hermione a rather withering look as he went by.

'I don't know exactly,' said Armin, who was starting to follow the customer back into the shop. He stopped for a moment and turned back to Hermione, who was still standing in the open doorway.

'An object sort of flew across the room,' he said in a low voice. 'Or that's what it looked like to me.'

Hermione was about to ask him more when the customer returned, demanding Armin's attention. He turned away, apologising to the customer.

'One last thing,' Hermione called out. 'Where did you say James was going on holiday?'

Armin looked up from a bookshelf, a flustered look on his face.

'Uh … Paris,' he replied. 'They're leaving tonight on the Eurostar.'

'Thanks Armin!' she shouted and stepped out onto the pavement, blinking in the sunshine. She stood for a moment in front of the shop and looked up at the brick façade of the church opposite, wondering whether it was the Vlaminck family's idea of a joke to open an occult bookshop just yards away from a church. Her gaze wandered from the church, and with surprise she found that she was being watched from a café across the street. A wiry man of about 40, with short-cropped hair and wearing a smart grey suit was looking at her through the glass of the café window, a look of intense concentration on his face. _Wizard or muggle_ she thought to herself, returning his gaze for a moment. _Definitely a muggle_. She turned and walked purposefully back down the street, looking for the nearest alleyway from where she could disapparate in safety. She returned to her room at the Leaky Cauldron to consider her next move. Then she went to the Owlery.


	13. The last of Harry Potter - Chapter 13

13\. The Clerk of Orleans

Dusk was well and truly down over the Thames as Hermione crossed London Bridge to Southwark. The sky had turned deep blue, the river to black, the buildings on its south side lit up by myriad lights, illuminating individual office compartments and their occupants. A thin breeze was floating up off the water, mingling with the fumes from the traffic surging over the bridge. She walked quickly, her bag striking her side, packed for a weekend away. _A weekend in Paris, no less. _She had checked out of the Cauldron, making a furtive foray into the Ministry to collect all the materials she had on memory charms, before heading over to Southwark. Caius was supposed to be waiting for her there, in the Clerk of Orleans. _Paris with Caius Hanmer. What am I thinking?_

He had said yes of course when she asked him. _I was hoping to get an owl from you_, he had said. And he was ready to leave that night. _Not surprising, he has nothing to do but hang around getting drunk in pubs_. Maybe it was a mistake. But Demelza couldn't come and she didn't quite like the idea of going alone. _He's a sharp one_, Harry had once said about him. _He'd be a good person to have watching your back_. Harry was a reliable source of advice surely, although she seemed to remember him being slightly drunk at the time. She slipped off Borough High Street just as it took over from London Bridge, moving swiftly down the steps to the passage that ran under the road.

Down in the underpass and out in the open street they were already spilling out of the pubs, the office boys in smart suits cradling half-drunk pint glasses, talking to office girls smiling back at them, cigarettes burning in their outstretched hands, their skirts too tight and their heels too high. Silently she left them behind, Southwark Cathedral tower rising up on her left, far above the revellers' heads and the little plumes of cigarette smoke escaping into the night air.

She stood before an empty expanse of pavement between an outlying wing of the Cathedral precincts and the black railings of a pub terrace, leading to a blind alley, its walls three or four storeys high. Glancing over her shoulder for a moment, she took a few steps down the alley then whispered an incantation. In a few moments, a narrow three-storey timber-framed building shimmered into sight, hemmed in between brick walls, nestling under the nave of the Cathedral. The Red House it was called, which was fair enough since its ancient timbers were painted blood red, for some reason lost to history. It had been a wizard's house supposedly. Oswald the Dapifer he had been called, but not much more was known of him. The oldest wizarding house in London, apparently, built in the thirteenth century. Some of the charms used to build it were still in place, so they said. So how come such a historic house had ended up with a pub in it? The sign that hung above the ground floor windows was marked with a picture of the moon, the words _The Clerk of Orleans_ inscribed beneath it.

She found him in a first floor bar, crammed into a wood-panelled booth with a pair of strapping wizards whose faces were vaguely familiar to her from the corridors of Hogwarts, only now they were old enough to drink. And they certainly had been, judging from their silly grins, glazed eyes and rather transparent attempts at appearing serious. A chair had been saved for her on the other side of the table.

'Hermione, this is Adam … and Adam,' said Caius gleefully, gesturing at the two wizards sitting either side of him. They got to their feet and shook Hermione's hand in turn as Caius introduced them, each of them adding his surname to complete the introductions. Adam Harries was taller of the two, with auburn hair and smiling blue eyes, while Adam Talfryn blinked at her through a dark mop of side-parted hair. Hermione had a vague impression that they had also been on somebody's quidditch team. Beaters possibly. Caius promptly dispatched the two Adams to get a round of drinks.

'They're not coming too, are they?' asked Hermione once she and Caius were alone. She expected the mission to be one of stealth and subtlety and doubted it was one of the Adams' strong points.

'Don't worry,' Caius replied, his accent more prominent than when they had last met. 'Lads from home they are, just happened to be in London, so it was only natural we went out for a drink. They won't be involved. Haven't breathed a word to them.'

'Pleased to hear it,' she replied. 'But aren't they from Hogwarts? I thought I recognised them.'

'Oh yes, they were at Hogwarts all right.'

Suddenly someone started laughing raucously at a neighbouring table. Hermione glanced around to see a man with a pointed black beard howling into his beer glass while the rest of his company guffawed along with him. He even slapped the table for extra effect.

'So that's why we had to meet here, is it?' she remarked coolly. 'So you could have a drink with your friends first? I have to wonder whether you're going to take this seriously.'

'No, there's a good reason for meeting here,' he replied. 'Ilaria's flat is in Bermondsey. She and Harry will pass through here on their way to Waterloo.'

In the message she had sent Caius by owl, she had mentioned only that Harry had taken time off work and was leaving for Paris that evening with his girlfriend. She had deliberately not mentioned any names.

'Oh, is that who you think his girlfriend is?' she asked innocently.

Caius smirked triumphantly.

'Well, you kept mentioning her last night for one thing. And today you tell me that he's off to Paris, which is also where Henoc is living. So this afternoon I did a bit of checking myself.'

'You didn't speak to her, did you?' she exclaimed in horror.

'Oh no, don't worry about that. _Subtle_, you said, didn't you? No, I just asked after her through a mutual friend. And by coincidence, Ilaria is going to Paris this evening too. On the last train.'

He smiled at the look of interest she could feel spreading across her face.

Adam Harries returned with the round of drinks. He clinked the beer glasses down on the table, leaned towards Caius and muttered to him in a low voice:

'Talfryn has got a good vantage point at the window. He'll send word if he sees them go past.'

'Grand,' replied Caius, already lifting his pint to his lips. 'So,' he continued, nodding at Hermione, 'we'd best drink up quickly. They could be going by at any time. Your good health.'

'Cheers,' Hermione replied stiffly and raised her glass.

She looked around the bar. The crowd was younger than in the Cauldron, and seemed to divide itself in two: on the one hand, groups of young wizards, well dressed and vaguely bohemian, making loud conversation, seemingly rather pleased at themselves and where they were: on the other, quieter, shadowy groups, mostly older men hunched over their pints, looking outwards from time to time with surly expressions on their faces. _Are they the locals, gradually being pushed out by this new crowd_? Caius was part of that new crowd, however much he might not want to admit it.

The conversation quickly turned to a girl who was causing Adam Harries some degree of heartache. From what Hermione could gather, she was a student, but whether she was a witch or a Muggle girl, she couldn't tell.

'I bumped into her down Gower Street,' Adam Harries was telling Caius. 'She asked me did I want to go for a drink with her and her mates in UCL Union. I said yeah, of course. So we went in, just the two of us, had a drink. It was early, not too many in there, so we were able to have a nice sort of a chat. Then her friends got there. Couple of girls and a lad. Athletic, smartly-dressed type. Handsome fucker too. Reckoned he was from one of the public schools.'

'Dackle, was he?' asked Caius.

'He was.'

'Is she peaceful too, your girl?'

_What are these expressions he comes out with? _She wanted to ask but bit her tongue.

'She is, but she's not mine. Seemed rather too into that public school boy for my liking. Never mentioned any boyfriend at all, which I thought a good sign. But still, they had a real … what'd you call it … rapport. I don't fancy my chances, I'll have to be honest.'

'Well, ask yourself: is she worth it though?' commented Caius.

'I'd say she is,' replied Adam Harries, looking bashfully into his pint. 'She's lovely. She's the sort of girl I could get serious about.'

Hermione found his attitude rather touching.

'Ah, but how would you tell her?' asked Caius. 'You'd have to tell her in the end.'

_Ah, tell her you're a wizard_. So the girl was a muggle. She had never really asked herself that question. _Well maybe once. That summer when Toby Philips and I went on those walks._ The walks had come to nothing, for the best undoubtedly

'Maybe I wouldn't,' Adam Harries replied. 'She might have trouble trusting me after that. Like I was casting charms on her without her knowing'

'You'd have to tell her eventually,' Hermione put in. 'It would be dishonest not to. You wouldn't be the first muggle-wizard couple.'

'Or if you never told her, you'd pretty much have to never do magic again,' said Caius.

'Ah, for the right girl, I could do that,' replied Adam.

'Really?' asked Hermione.

'I reckon so. Or if I told her, and she didn't like it, I could promise not to do any more magic.'

'But I wonder,' remarked Caius. 'What happens if you tell her, and then you break up? I suppose the Ministry steps in and erases the poor girl's mind. Doesn't seem fair, in a way, does it?'

'When you put it like that it doesn't,' replied Adam. 'But on the other hand, what if it was a really bad break-up and the girl felt like being vindictive? She could start going around telling everyone I was a wizard.'

'And do you think many people would believe her?' asked Hermione.

'Probably they wouldn't,' replied Caius. 'But then why does the Ministry always go to the bother of wiping their memories?'

'You've got a point there,' said Hermione.

'Maybe I should try and find myself a witch after all,' said Adam, drinking the last of his pint.

Caius suddenly reached into his pocket and pulled out his wand. The tip of it was glowing a pale yellow.

'Talfryn,' he said. He stood up in a hurry, reaching for his pint and downing the rest of it. 'We should be going,' he said to Hermione, who nodded in reply.

'You going to finish that?' he asked, pointing to her drink.

'No,' she replied.

When they got outside, the revellers in the street were even louder and more numerous. Hermione scanned the crowd, looking for Harry and Ilaria.

'There they are,' she said, pointing to a couple further down the street and walking away from them.

* * *

'How are we doing for time?' said Ilaria.

James looked down at his watch.

'Plenty of time,' he replied, trying to push his hair out of his face. The wind was starting to blow in off the river, but Bankside was packed with people. _It is Friday night after all_.

'Shall we stop for a quick drink?' she said, pointing at the brick-built pub just across from the waterside.

'Sure.'

Inside there were not quite as many people as they expected. After weaving through the crowd for a minute or two they found an empty, rather forlorn table pushed nearly against the window, with just two chairs left around it. They pushed their rucksacks under the table and James went to get drinks.

'So what do you want to do in Paris?' he asked once he had returned.

'Oh, not so much. Just walk the streets, feel the atmosphere. It's hard to go wrong in the centre of Paris, almost everywhere has it … Well, maybe some of the streets in the Latin Quarter have had the atmosphere choked out of them by too much tourism, but we can easily avoid those parts. It's going to be so nice to walk the back streets, just you and me.'

She smiled and reached her hand across the table, slipping it into his.

'Won't we be hanging out with your friend Henoc?' he asked. She frowned for an instant then smiled again. _I sounded jealous_. Which was fair enough: she'd shown him a photograph. _Handsome looking bastard_.

'Only a little bit,' she replied softly. 'For a drink or something, maybe go to a restaurant. He is lending us a flat, after all.'

'That's true.'

'But you don't have to worry. It's you I want to spend time with.' She wriggled her hand free of his grasp then slid her fingers a little way up his sleeve. For a moment she closed her eyes as she caressed his arm.

'Anyway,' she continued. 'This holiday is about you getting some rest. I don't want you getting ill again. Have you had any more blackouts? Or headaches?'

He smiled, a little ruefully he thought.

'I had a bit of a headache this afternoon, but I took a tablet and it went away.'

She listened intently to him, stroking his hand again.

'That's good, but you should have told me. I would have given you a head massage. That's the best remedy.'

He smiled again.

'You were on the phone.'

At that point she got up abruptly.

'I'll be back in a minute,' she said as she moved out from behind the table. As she passed him she stopped, reached in and kissed him on the top of his head. The heels she was wearing made her a few inches taller than usual.

He watched her disappear into the crowd then leaned back in his seat and gazed out of the window. He looked past the crowd thronging on the riverside, over the river that lay out of sight, black and chill below the embankment. He looked at the distant lights on the other bank and the motionless cranes above them, then along the line of streetlamps running across the bridge, the pale dome of St Pauls beyond them. Finally his eyes drifted back to his side of the river, his gaze coming to rest at the level of the countless and very diverse heads, some passing to the left or to the right, others fixed in little groups, little contingents of the masses out in London on a mild Friday night, out for a drink in the night air before the evenings got too cold. He didn't quite feel a part of them. Nothing specific; he just didn't.

Among the myriad heads through the glass, suddenly one stood out: it was the head of a girl walking quickly across his vision from left to right, seemingly alone, her long straight red hair streaming behind her. He caught a glimpse of a slim, pale face in profile against the dark of the evening, a small mouth set in a serious, determined expression. _I know her_ was the first thought. _What's her name_ was the second. Before the third thought had even formed itself in words in his head he was looking down at his hands as they lay propped against the side of the table. _These hands harmed her_ was how the third thought came to him. He scrutinised them, as if any trace of the violence he had done was still on them. _What were you expecting to see? Blood? You washed it off months ago._

He looked up and out through the glass. The girl was gone, as if she had never even been there. He was up and out of his seat already, pushing through the crowd and out through the door of the pub and onto Bankside. He turned his gaze along the riverside and up at Southwark Bridge, cursing it as if it was hiding the girl with its massive stone bulk. He started walking, passing close to the metal railings where the crowds were thinner. If he couldn't see her it was because she hadn't really been there. It had been a ghost that he had seen, come to puncture his conscience and his opaque memory, make him remember the deed he had done. _If she's a ghost it means I killed her_. He had put his hands around her neck; of that he was sure.

He got as far as the bridge, but there was no sign of the girl. He stood very still, the side of the bridge looming up over him. He started to head for the underpass, but out of the corner of his eye he seemed to see her up on the bridge, moving away from him as she headed for the north side of the river. He went numbly up the steps, heart pounding and feet echoing on the stone stairs, his head empty with dread.

The bridge was surprisingly quiet: scarcely anyone up there walking, just the occasional car passing. Far away, close to the north bank, a figure was disappearing into the darkness. Suddenly a name presented itself and he was shouting it out into the night before he had time to think about what he was doing.

'Ginny!'

The figure paused for a moment but didn't turn back. Then she disappeared off the end of the bridge and headed up the road on the other side. He started forward again but stopped short as his legs nearly buckled under him. His head was hurting again. He took a few steps then slumped down into one of the little alcoves built at intervals into the parapet of the bridge. A vision sent to prick his conscience wouldn't hear his actual voice shouting in the night. He felt sure that she was real and no apparition, that the name he had shouted was the right one. Surely she had heard him. If it was her, she would have recognised his voice. But probably his voice was the last voice she wanted to hear, especially on a lonely bridge in the dark.

He wasn't sure how long he had been sitting there, hunched against the stone parapet. The only sensations were the cold of the river and the night and the throbbing inside his skull. He reached his hand to his head, what for he didn't know. His hand was numb as it touched his forehead. He looked down at it to check it was still there. _You choked her_ came the words, out of nowhere, or out of the waters of the river. He stumbled to his feet and put his numb hands on the parapet. _Don't I even get to remember my real name? Am I really just going to go down as a nameless killer?_ He started to lunge forward. _No, there is only guilt_. _Guilt and justice_. He wanted to fall, imagining that it wasn't cold water down below him but nothingness.

Suddenly hands were pulling him away as he swayed on the wall, pulling him back down into the alcove, where he landed rather untidily.

'You stupid idiot!' A girl was shouting at him. Not Ginny. But a voice that was familiar from somewhere. He looked round. She was on her knees by his side, her face sheet white and her hair blowing in the breeze. He did know her: _the girl in the churchyard_. He didn't have to grope around for her name, he knew it: _Hermione_.

She shoved him hard in the chest, nearly pushing him onto his back. Her fists were clenched and a look of withering intensity was on her face. He stared at her in surprise, the blood rushing back to his cheeks, his hands no longer numb.

'Harry how could you?!'

_Harry?_

'What do you have to say for yourself?' she shouted, still livid.

'I … uhh … I'm sorry?'

'So you should be,' she said, breathing quickly and wiping her eye. She looked at him again, her eyes flashing in the darkness. 'My God, you were actually going to jump over the side …'

She reached out and put her hand against his temple, gripping it tightly with the tips of her fingers. He looked at her curiously, wondering what on earth it was she was trying to do. She seemed to look for something in his eyes. The anger was fading quickly from her face, sadness replacing it.

'You don't know who I am,' she said after a moment, her voice almost inaudible.

'Yes I do' he replied. 'We met just the other day.'

She shook her head firmly and put both arms around his head, cradling him against her chest. _Why does she care?_

'Don't say that, Harry,' she replied. Her voice was soft and even, but she seemed to be speaking to someone who wasn't there. He felt a little awkward, as if he was overhearing her speaking with someone else.

'How can I make you better?' she whispered.

_She can't_ said a voice in his head, his voice or the voice that had accused him before. Then the guilt was back with him.

'You can't,' he said as he broke out of the embrace. 'I've done something terrible. There's no coming back from it.'

She listened in silence, her eyes glazed and glistening.

Suddenly a new sound pierced the darkness.

'James!'

_Ilaria_. Her voice was distant, seemingly coming from somewhere down below. He scrambled to his feet again. He could make her out, standing on the riverside walk, leaning against the railings, calling out for him, as if to reclaim him from the river itself.

'Don't answer her,' said Hermione, who was standing a little way away from him on the pavement. He turned round and looked at her oddly.

'What do you mean?' he asked, genuinely mystified.

He looked back at the riverside. Ilaria was making for the bridge.

'She's on her way,' he said in a matter-of-fact voice. Hermione didn't answer him. He could still hear her voice, speaking indistinctly under her breath, seemingly far away from him.

'I'm sorry, Harry,' he heard her say. Then a great, calming emptiness descended on him.


	14. The last of Harry Potter - Chapter 14

14\. Witchfinders

Hermione crouched in the stairwell, her head little more than a metre below the level of the bridge. Their footsteps came towards her, back towards the South Bank. She wasn't worried about them coming down the staircase where she was hiding: they would stay on their side of the road, go down the other set of steps and continue on their way along the South Bank towards Waterloo station. She could hear their voices, _her_ voice mainly: cooing, protective, terribly concerned.

'I'm not going to let you out of my sight any more, darling,' she was saying. There was no reproach in the voice; only concern. _Darling, indeed_. She wanted to shove it down her throat.

Now their footsteps were echoing on the steps, on the other set of steps. _A memory charm, of all things_. She hoped it had worked and hadn't done him any more damage. But when it came to memory charms she was confident in her abilities. She could work them with reasonable precision, down to a single memory. Of course, it was far easier to extract a recent memory. But it was clear to her now just how fragile he was.

For a brief moment she entertained a vision of what she would have done to Ilaria De Angelis if she had decided to wait for her on the bridge. It would have been messy. It would almost certainly have been seen by muggles. And it would have caused an embarrassing incident at work, to say the least: _a Ministry official making a public spectacle of magic in the middle of London_. But none of that mattered. The damage to Harry could have been irreparable.

She stood up stiffly, crossed the road and looked down the other stairwell. It was empty. She wondered where Caius was. Hopefully he hadn't gone into the pub to get himself a drink. She made her way noiselessly down the steps and turned the corner onto the riverside walk.

Caius was the first thing she saw. He was standing in the shadows, slightly back from the main stream of passers-by. The next thing she noticed was the look on his face: _fear and warning_. A man was standing next to him in the shadows. A handsome man with tousled blonde hair. He looked vaguely familiar to her. Disguised in his hand, almost invisible to the passers-by but quite visible to her, was a wand, pointed subtly at Caius.

'I wouldn't bother hanging around here,' said Caius with put-on calmness. 'They want to invite us to a party, but I reckon it'll be crap.'

She looked down the underpass. A tall woman with a proud, sculpted face and long brown hair was standing there, quite still, watching her, a look of satisfaction on her face. _What a pair these two make. So photogenic._ The woman made a quick gesture with her hand, so that Hermione saw the tip of her wand.

'Oh no, do come and hang out with us,' said the woman, now walking towards them. _Another opportunity for a public spectacle of magic. _

'Trying to resist us here would be a very bad idea, as you well know,' continued the woman, now speaking directly inside Hermione's head. 'And there's really no need. We're simply messengers, sent here by someone who wants to talk to you.'

The woman gestured to Hermione to step with her out of the crowd. She obeyed, for the moment.

'Who wants to talk to us?' Hermione began, adopting her most peevish, official voice.

'You won't know him', the woman replied.

'Try me. I know very well who's on the Ministry's list of at-large dark wizards. I'm just curious how far down the list your boss is.'

The blonde man laughed. The laugh was surprisingly a rather jovial one.

'Way off the mark, I'm afraid.'

'Pity,' added the woman. 'One of the Ministry's finest, and she hasn't the foggiest idea who we represent.'

'We're the good guys,' added the blonde man, smiling even as he kept his wand trained on Caius. 'Although you might have a hard time seeing it.' _I've seen him at Hogwarts_, Hermione suddenly thought.

'See?' he replied. 'You've recognised me. I'm a fellow Gryffindor.'

A brief memory of a boy who had been in Percy Weasley's year flashed through her mind. _A reckless show-off. Don't remember anything positive about him._ _He's a good legilimens though_. She grasped for a name but couldn't see it.

'Maybe later,' replied the man. 'When you remember something nice about me.'

'Enough of this,' snapped the woman. 'Can we carry on this fascinating chat at the office?'

She turned to Hermione and Caius. Unlike her colleague, Hermione couldn't place her at all. She was a witch all right, but not a Hogwarts witch. Not that it meant anything: plenty of wizards and witches didn't attend Hogwarts: some went to regular schools and others were taught at home.

'I trust it you're going to come with us without a fuss?'

'Why would we make a fuss when you've been so charming?' remarked Caius.

'I admit I'm a little curious as to what all this is about,' said Hermione, 'but we really haven't got time this evening. Perhaps we could make an appointment?'

'I was afraid you were going to say that,' said the woman. Hands reached for her and Caius, and the next moment all four of them were gone from the street.

* * *

They stood before a tired brick-fronted building, a Victorian town house divided up into flats. By the look of the street they were still in central London, possibly where it merged into the East End. Despite the wizards' obvious skill in legilimency, Hermione couldn't help but speculate about who they were working for. The dark wizards on the Auror Office list weren't up to all that much, so she had heard. And at the back of her mind she couldn't help wondering whether this all had something to do with Harry and Ilaria.

'You do realise that if I report this, the two of you will lose your wands?' Hermione began. _Oh my goodness I sound like Dolores Umbridge._

This didn't seem to impress them.

'Are you going to come inside?' asked the brown-haired witch.

'How long is it going to take?'

'Not long.'

She looked at Caius, who shrugged at her in return. _How do I know he isn't in league with them? Him and Ilaria?_

They passed through a darkened hallway, the wizards not bothering to turn on the lights, and stopped before a door at the far end of the ground floor. Through the gloom Hermione could make out a nameplate on the door. The nameplate read:

_MIR_

_The campaign to prove magic is real_

She had read it twice just to believe it.

'Is this serious?' she remarked as the door opened, letting out a white, harsh light.

'I was right,' said Caius. 'This is going to be a terrible party.'

'Go in,' said the witch, a cold look on her face. Hermione glanced at Caius. Was it worth trying to escape? She was a little too curious to try.

Inside was a flat with the sparse, dreary decor of a rented office. In a room off to the right-hand of the hall a man was waiting for them, sitting upright on a black leather sofa. A table and two empty chairs had been arranged in front of him in the middle of the room. Without saying a word, he gestured to Hermione and Caius to sit down. The face was not friendly, but she was surprised to find that she recognised it: narrow, slightly tanned cheeks, a dry complexion, a taut, straining neck, sharp blue eyes, close cropped wiry dark blonde hair. _The man in the cafe across the street from Vlaminck's._ _So it was me he was watching?_

Still not addressing Hermione and Caius, he looked up at the two wizards standing behind them.

'Thank you,' he said gravely.

'This is the person you saw leaving Vlaminck's this morning,' said the blonde wizard.

He seemed to look at her for the first time. He surveyed her from behind his desk with a keen but disapproving expression.

'Yes, it is,' he said quickly. The taut smile that stretched out across his lips was like that of a teacher who had just caught some pupils smoking in the bushes. 'And so this is _the_ Hermione Granger?'

She had had enough of being ignored.

'Since you brought us here, I assume it was because you wanted to speak with us,' she said, folding her arms and scowling at him.

The blue eyes shot back to her.

'Oh I do want to speak with you,' he replied. 'I'm sure you'll have lots of interesting things to say.'

'Yes, this is Hermione Granger,' said the blonde wizard from behind her back. 'She was a few years below me at school. A very powerful witch, very deeply versed in spell lore. Key member of the Order of the Phoenix during the wizarding civil war, one of the leaders of that organisation and one of its main strategists, and as a result now a rising figure in the Ministry of Magic, close to the Minister itself.'

The man nodded grimly at the details of his subordinate's report.

Then his gaze rose again. 'And who is the other one?'

'Caius Hanmer. Nothing much to report on him, other than he comes from a well-to-do family. Part of the wizarding gentry.'

'Oh I wouldn't go that far,' remarked Caius. 'The Skeltons are a far more illustrious family than we are.'

_Skelton_. That was the name. Charlie Skelton. He had obviously hidden it from her with legilimency.

A rather sour expression spread over the man's face, but he said nothing. He turned again to Hermione, a serene, composed expression in its place.

'So you've done very well out of being on the winning side.'

The scowl remained fixed to her face.

'I'm sorry, who are you?' she asked witheringly.

His face unwillingly registered her discontent.

'You are entitled to that, at least,' he remarked, almost politely. 'My name is Stephen Morley. You probably saw the name of our organisation on the door.'

'Yes. Something about proving magic is real,' Hermione replied.

'That is our aim, yes. I am the chairman. You've already met my associates, Chloe Goodwin and Charlie Skelton. The vice chairman, Mr Marchelow, is on his way and will hopefully be joining us soon.'

Apart from Charlie Skelton the names meant nothing to her.

'Well, Mr Morley,' Hermione began. 'Could we just clear something up at this point? There's something I don't quite get. For someone so interested in magic that you want to prove its existence, and with associates who are obviously wizards themselves, you don't seem very keen on magic.'

'I knew that would strike you,' replied Mr Morley, grinning coldly. 'I'm glad you brought it up. I was wondering if you were going to pretend that you're not a witch, or even …' chuckling to himself, '…that witchcraft doesn't exist. Happily we can dispense with that pretence. I am indeed not 'keen on magic', as you put it. I have very good reasons for that. Chloe and Charlie know that only too well, I've certainly never hidden it from anyone, least of all from them. Don't imagine that I believe magic to be the result of some diabolic pact. Not at all. I acknowledge that wizards don't have a choice in whether they have magical ability or not. It depends what they choose to do with it. Chloe and Charlie, and other wizards like them, agree with me that magic has to come out into the open, to become a legitimate, law-abiding part of the fabric of this country. They agree that wizards and witches cannot be allowed to live among us in secret, free to use their powers at will.'

As Mr Morley ended his speech, Hermione looked at Chloe and Charlie. Their faces revealed nothing. Mr Morley continued.

'Do you really think it's fair, Miss Granger, that you should exist in secret, with no checks on your powers whatever?'

She had wondered, at times, whether it was right that magic was kept secret, but she wasn't sure she saw any alternative. It would so easily degenerate into misunderstanding and hysteria.

'Whether secrecy is absolutely essential I wouldn't know,' she replied. 'It's debatable I suppose. But it's not true that there are no checks on wizards' powers. Since you're so well informed, you would know that wizards are bound by laws that are just as strict, if not stricter than those governing the rest of the population.'

'From what I've seen of your statutes,' replied Mr Morley, 'you devote an awful lot of attention to ensuring that secrecy prevails. One of the worst crimes a wizard can commit is to risk the exposure of your society. And you have an army of secret agents whose job is to go around wiping the memories of the poor people who happen to come into contact with you. Isn't that so?'

'People's memories do get erased,' Hermione admitted. 'But there's hardly an army of agents going around doing it. And again, wizards who hurt other people, or steal from them, or kill, get punished whether the victim is another wizard or a mu …'

'A Muggle,' put in Chloe Goodwin scathingly.

'A non-magical person,' said Hermione, correcting herself.

'But why should you have your own courts, and your own punishments?' Mr Morley probed again. 'We are all one country here. Why should we trust wizards to self-regulate? Particularly when for you, the confiscation of a wizard's wand is considered a harsh punishment.'

'Since you know so much about wizards,' Caius remarked, 'you may have heard of a place called Azkaban. Maybe you should pay the place a visit. You may change your mind about what is and isn't a harsh punishment.'

'I've heard of it of course,' replied Mr Morley. 'A ghastly place by the sounds of it, whose inmates undergo psychological torture comparable with some of history's most sinister political regimes. It's hardly a good advertisement for wizarding society now, is it?'

'One moment we're too lenient,' Hermione retorted, albeit with little conviction, 'the next too harsh.'

'You might well say so,' said Mr Morley, almost brightly. 'And you wouldn't be wrong. I would call your laws arbitrary at best.'

'But seriously,' said Hermione, now losing patience with the man, and starting to become eager to leave that place. 'What do you propose to do? Rewrite wizarding laws? Apply to become the next Minister of Magic? What are you anyway, a wizard or not?'

Her irritation seemed to please him. He tutted in reply.

'Am I a wizard? Most certainly not.'

'Then why do you care so much what wizards do? Why is it any of your business?'

He shook his head.

'It is the business of everyone in this country to know that we have in our midst a society within society that acts with impunity to protect its interests and achieve its goals, and which moreover has supernatural powers at its disposal. A secret society that is riven with a feeling of superiority over us mere mortals, a feeling of superiority that can so easily turn genocidal.'

'Since you've made it clear that you know about what happened a few years ago,' replied Hermione, 'you'll also know that wizards who chose to use their power for evil were defeated.'

'Yes, your faction defeated them,' said Mr Morley. 'Defeated them and took control.'

'And the country,' remarked Caius, with bitter emphasis on the word 'country', 'is much safer as a result.'

'The country stands in debt to you, is that it?' asked Mr Morley.

'If you like,' replied Caius.

'The country's welfare depends on your magnanimity, is that about the size of it?'

'You're taking it too far, as you well know,' said Hermione.

'Am I? You have the power to decide whether we live or die, is that right?'

The anger she had been trying to repress was by now starting to leak out. She clenched her fists, digging her nails into her palms.

'Scores of us died to protect you,' she said in a voice louder than she had intended. 'Did they forget to tell you that?' She gestured angrily at the two wizards standing behind her.

'Yes, plenty died as a result of your civil war,' Mr Morley replied. 'Although the number of victims who were wizards was far fewer than the number of victims who were innocent members of the public. You would know that, I think, given your position in the organisation you work for.'

'Yes, a lot of innocent non-magical people died,' said Hermione. 'But you can't even imagine how many would have died if the other side had won.'

'Oh yes, you were the good guys, weren't you?'

'Yes, we were.'

'But why, after good triumphed, did you not do the right thing and come out into the open, to explain yourselves to the people of this country, to account for all the unexplained deaths, to come forward and be judged?'

'I … uh …' She had no reply. In truth, she had never really considered it.

With sudden gusto, Mr Morley put his elbows on the desk and clasped his fingers together, half suppressing a smile as he did so.

'Quite,' he said grimly, the smile still lingering on his lips. 'You did nothing of the sort. You covered up the deaths, took back power, wielded a little retribution and then went back to business as usual. And promotions all round for the likes of you, eh, Miss Granger?'

She glanced across at Caius. He looked back at her, acknowledging the idea she was proposing to him. She flexed her wand hand. But as she did, she felt a scorching pain flash through it.

'This is no time for leaving,' replied Chloe Goodwin, speaking in a low voice at her back.

'No, Miss Granger, this is no time for leaving,' said Mr Morley, cold command in his voice.

Hermione scowled at him.

'What exactly is it that you propose?' she asked quietly. 'What on earth do you want from us?'

'Take my proposals before your Minister of Magic, as you call him,' replied Mr Morley.

'What proposals?'

'That you unmask yourselves and ask for … no, petition for … integration into this country,' he replied. 'So we can all live peacefully as equals. You can hardly claim that it's unreasonable, now, can you?'

She smiled.

'And do you think that kidnapping us is going to convince us to be your ambassadors?' she said.

'Kidnapping, do you call this?' said Mr Morley.

'Well, I get the distinct impression that we're being held here against our will,' replied Hermione.

'A meeting I call it,' said Mr Morley. 'An exchange of views. I'm not interested in kidnapping, I'm interested in making my point. And the issue at stake is so important that I'm prepared to keep you here until you have listened to everything I have to say.'

'And by the sound of things, that may take some time,' put in Caius.

'Miss Granger,' said Mr Morley, plainly trying to ignore Caius. 'It is worth your while to hear what I have to say.'

Hermione frowned at him.

'Like I said, you expect me to plead your case before the Ministry?'

'I can hardly ask for an audience myself, can I?' Mr Morley replied, 'a mere muggle like me?'

'Well, you could ask your tamed wizards here to send a petition or something on your behalf,' remarked Caius. The next moment he winced in pain, obviously the recipient of some curse cast behind his back.

'Miss Granger, you at least strike me as an intelligent girl,' said Mr Morley, ignoring what had just happened. 'We have had a debate of sorts this evening. If you're honest with yourself, you'll admit that I have a point. You're ambitious too, as I understand it, which is fair enough, although I don't approve of the organisation you've chosen to work for. If you made this idea work, you will go down in history as one of the people who brought about the integration of wizards into mainstream society.'

'She already went down in history,' put in Caius. 'She was at Harry Potter's side the night he put an end to Voldemort.'

'Let's not go back to that dead end, please,' replied Mr Morley with an exasperated air.

Hermione smiled again.

'You want me to work for you, is that it?' she asked.

'You disapprove of my methods, I suppose?' said Mr Morley. 'It's very easy for you. The doors of your society are open to you. They are closed to me. Your society looks down on me, doesn't give me the time of day. I'm nothing but a sheep to be herded this way or that, or slaughtered if one of you deems it appropriate.'

'I'm perfectly able to judge a person's character,' Hermione replied. 'Whether they're a wizard or not. I don't have a very good feeling about you. And you certainly haven't convinced me. So now I'd like to leave, together with my friend here.'

'You won't take my proposition before your organisation?'

'You realise what would happen if I did?' said Hermione. 'That someone would come to erase all the knowledge of magic you've acquired.'

'They'd have a nasty surprise if they did,' said Chloe Goodwin.

'I appreciate your candour, Miss Granger,' replied Mr Morley. 'You're undoubtedly telling the truth when you say that one of your agents would be dispatched to deal with me. It's hardly worth mentioning that this is just another confirmation that your organisation is not as noble as it makes out to be.'

She really didn't know what else she could say to the man.

'I don't say it's so noble. But it has the right to exist and the right to a little trust.'

'Because you are the good guys, and you can be trusted to protect us …'

She half-shrugged in reply. Mr Morley stood up rather abruptly and walked silently to a desk at the far end of the room, next to a window with the blinds pulled down. He picked up a laptop from the desk and brought it over to them.

'I wonder what you make of this,' he said curtly.

He typed in a password, opened a file then turned the laptop around so that they could see the screen.

To begin with the file showed nothing but a black screen. But after a few moments the blackness was replaced by a video recording that started to run. Mr Morley maximised the image so that it filled the whole screen. The image was grainy, dimly lit and slightly pixelated, making it hard to see much of the surroundings, but they could make out three figures in a room, one seated and two standing, one in front of the seated figure and the other to the side, indistinct and somewhat in the background. The two standing figures wore masks. The person seated was obviously their prisoner and seemed to be tied to the chair he was sitting on.

'Explain this to me,' said the masked figure, brandishing a piece of paper at the prisoner. Hermione thought she could detect a faint trace of a foreign accent in his voice.

'I don't know anything about it,' replied the prisoner, showing no sign of being intimidated by his captors.

'Really? It was sent to your email address though.'

'Emails get sent to the wrong address all the time.'

'Your name is Goodwin, though, isn't it? Ben Goodwin …'

Through the gloom of pixels the prisoner seemed to smile.

'You know, I don't feel like we've really hit it off so far, so I don't really feel like telling you.'

The masked figure lowered the piece of paper in his hand.

'To be honest I hardly need your confirmation. I've already seen your driving licence. We accept that as proof of your ID.'

'That's good,' said the prisoner. 'As I didn't bring a gas bill with me.'

'Funny,' said the masked man. 'But to get back to business: this email was sent to Ben Goodwin, among others, and you are Ben Goodwin, whether you admit it or not.'

He held up the piece of paper again, this time closer to the prisoner's face.

'What do you see written on it?' he asked calmly.

'Names and addresses,' said the prisoner in an equally nonchalant tone.

'I don't suppose you're going to tell me whose?'

'No, because I don't know.'

'I think you do. But I'll tell you anyway. They're the names and addresses of wizards. Do you know how I know?'

'No'

'Because my name and address are on the list and, as you and I know, I am a wizard.'

As if to confirm this, he pulled out his wand and pointed it at the prisoner. The prisoner made no response other than to sit a bit more stiffly in his chair.

'And what's more,' said the masked wizard, 'I don't remember giving out my name and address to you and your friends.'

'So what?' the prisoner replied. 'It's probably just some mailing list.'

'A mailing list … And what does this instruction mean: 'wizards to be targeted'. Targeted for what?'

'Like I said, must be a mailing list. Special offers on potion ingredients or something.'

The masked wizard put the piece of paper away and looked at the prisoner. He seemed to be laughing softly to himself.

'It may interest you to know,' he said, once again pointing his wand at the prisoner, 'that some of the people on this list have already received what you call _special offers_'. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a different piece of paper, this time some sort of flyer.

'Read it,' he said, thrusting it at the man's face.

'I'd rather not,' said the prisoner.

The wizard moved swiftly round the room, all the time keeping his wand trained on the prisoner. He handed the paper to the other masked figure then went back to his original position.

'We know you practise witchcraft', the other figure began to read. She spoke with a thin, precise voice. 'We are watching you. Expect a visit from us'.

'Sounds friendly, doesn't it,' remarked the first wizard.

'How should I know?' said the prisoner. 'I don't know anything about it.'

'In any case,' said the wizard, 'there's only one thing we need from you, and that I think you do know. Tell us and we'll let you go.'

The prisoner said nothing.

'The name of the person who sent this email, that's what we want. Tell us who gave you the instructions to target these wizards.'

'I can't tell you what I don't know.'

The masked wizard turned to his companion.

'I don't know. Has he convinced you?'

'No,' came the reply.

The prisoner shrugged and looked grimly at the wizard and the wand pointed towards him.

The female masked figure left her post and came to join her companion as they silently contemplated the prisoner. After a few moments the first wizard nodded to her silently.

'_Mortify_,' she said, her thin voice breaking the silence. Blood started to seep from the prisoner's eyes, ears and mouth.

At that point the recording ended. Mr Morley snapped the screen shut.

'Still think the good guys won?' he asked, his eyes scrutinising Hermione and Caius.

'Well, you would need to tell us who those people are and when this was filmed, for a start,' said Hermione.

'They weren't Death Eaters, if that's what you were hoping to suggest,' said Mr Morley.

But she hadn't thought that. She couldn't see Death Eaters intercepting people's emails for one thing. And the masks weren't right either. She didn't know what kind of dark wizards these were.

'As for the date of the recording, I can tell you that,' said Mr Morley. 'It dates from a few months ago. You'll be pleased to hear that the victim escaped with his life. Somewhat scarred by his encounter with wizards, of course.'

_Definitely not Death Eaters then_, Hermione thought to herself.

'That's as maybe,' said Caius. 'But what's to say the prisoner wasn't a wizard himself? He seemed like an insider to me.'

'He isn't,' said Chloe Goodwin harshly. 'I guarantee it. He's my husband.'

'So he's part of your organisation?' said Caius, scowling at Mr Morley. 'I suppose that means that you and he have been going round sending threatening letters to wizards' homes.'

'And I suppose you,' Hermione added, turning to Chloe Goodwin, 'supplied the addresses? I've changed my mind: I will be bringing this up with the Ministry. A serious inquiry is needed in this case.'

'Enquire all you like,' hissed Chloe in reply, coming very close to her and training her wand on her. 'We don't answer to the Ministry of Magic or to any other part of wizarding society. We're outside the system.'

'The system may be interested in you, though,' Hermione retorted.

'Enough!' Mr Morley shouted, interrupting them. 'Am I to understand, Miss Granger,' he continued, returning to his usual composed tone, 'that you condone wizard torture of prisoners?'

'No,' said Hermione. 'I certainly don't. But this prisoner is rather suspicious himself. You're all …'

At that moment the door opened. A tall man in a heavy coat, with thick bushy hair and beard bustled into the room. He looked around at the people gathered in the room, his eyes bulging and a look of ponderous agitation on his face. Barging into the room behind him came a red-faced, muscular man with curly blondish hair, brandishing a wand and pulling along with him a clearly terrified young woman. She was petite, half a foot shorter than her captors, with large, sad blue eyes and fine, mousy, disordered hair. When she saw Hermione, her eyes grew even wider.

'Another one of them, Stephen,' said the black-bearded man in a low, tremulous voice. He pointed at the woman, a look of fearful contempt in his eyes.

'Very good, how did you catch her?' asked Mr Morley.

'I saw her using a wand to open the door to a safe house, replied the red-faced wizard, obviously very pleased with himself.

'And what's more,' added the black-bearded man, 'we've located another site.'

'Excellent,' replied Mr Morley. 'Did you start to excavate?'

'Not yet.'

The black-bearded man looked coldly at Hermione and Caius.

'You caught a pair yourself I see,' he murmured.

_They're witchfinders_. Suddenly the thought flashed into Hermione's mind. She had never seen one before. But that must be who they were, Stephen Morley and the black-bearded man. This was presumably the vice chairman they had been told was on his way.

'That's right. Know who this is?' said Mr Morley, pointing at Hermione.

'You know I refuse to speak their names,' replied the black-bearded man.

'This one's a protégée of the Minister of Magic,' added Morley, adding sarcastic emphasis to the words 'Minister of Magic'.

'I recognise the face,' said the man, slowly coming nearer to her then stopping at a safe distance. 'A troubled face,' he remarked, inspecting her with dark, wary eyes. 'Hardly surprising when you think what lies beneath the skin.'

He looked away abruptly and turned to Morley.

'Did you get anywhere with them?' he asked.

'They're stubborn,' replied Morley.

'Unwilling of course,' replied his associate.

'Excuse me,' Hermione interrupted, addressing Morley, who struck her as the saner of the pair. 'But who is this?'

The man turned and looked at Hermione with what seemed like some kind of astonishment.

'Of course, my apologies,' Mr Morley replied 'This is Robert Marchelow, Vice-chair of our movement.'

Mr Marchelow turned to Morley.

'Is it wise, giving them our names?' he asked, apparently quite serious.

'It hardly matters,' Morley replied.

'Whatever you think best,' Marchelow remarked, seemingly unconvinced.

He turned again, this time looking at Caius.

'Smirking defiance,' he murmured to himself. 'Not a hint of shame. Let _them_ do the excavation,' he added, his voice loud again. 'Then they'll see.'

Before they knew what was happening, the office disintegrated before their eyes and they were out in the open. When their surroundings stabilised, they were all standing in a kind of muddy depression, embankments of rough unhealthy grass rising on either side of them. The moon was out, casting a doleful light on the company.

Hermione's first instinct was this was the moment to flee, but as soon as she tried to move she found that some charm held her fixed in place. Glancing around, she could see that the same charm also bound Caius and the sad-eyed witch.

'Don't even think about it,' said Chloe Goodwin.

'That's right,' added Mr Morley. 'It's regrettable that you weren't in any way affected by what I showed you earlier. But hardly surprising I suppose. So we're going to have to try a bit harder to convince you that your position is completely untenable.'

'Really?' replied Hermione. 'I would just mention, since I suppose that you don't actually want the Ministry of Magic to launch a full-scale investigation into your activities, that if anything happens to us tonight, that's exactly what you'll get.'

Mr Marchelow leaned towards her.

'Your Ministry of Magic,' he said in a low voice, 'which never investigated the deaths of people killed by wizards, which has no memorial to those murdered and thrown in unmarked graves. Your Ministry only launches an investigation to make sure that its interests are protected.'

'The fact is,' said Mr Morley with a cough, interrupting his associate, 'that the day will come when your Ministry of Magic will have to face the reality that its authority is based on a sham. You'll come to see it yourselves, if not tonight, then in due course. Consider this part of laying the groundwork.'

'Behaving like this you're not going to convince me of anything,' replied Hermione coolly.

'We'll see,' said Mr Morley.

'Let's get on with it,' said Mr Marchelow in a loud whisper into his associate's ear. Mr Morley nodded and took a step back.

'I leave you in the capable hands of Mr Marchelow.'

Marchelow nodded roughly to the red-faced wizard who had accompanied him. Immediately the wizard muttered a charm and spades materialised in the hands of Hermione, Caius and the sad-eyed witch. Caius sized up the spade in his hand.

'Before you get any ideas,' remarked Charlie Skelton, I'd take a look around you. Caius looked up slowly, a rather bored expression on his face. The three wizards who served the witchfinders had their wands pointed at them.

'This place,' Mr Marchelow began suddenly, his arms raised in the air, 'is an accursed place. Death lingers here, poisons the air, chokes me as I try to speak. This is a place of murder. The murder of innocents, killed by wizards.'

'If you're planning to raise the dead,' Caius remarked, 'I think you ought to know that that's the sort of thing that dark wizards do, and I sort of had the impression you're not so keen on them.'

Hermione shivered. It was true that there was a bleak, baleful air about the place.

'No such abominations will be done here,' replied Mr Marchelow, even more sonorously. 'Tonight we are here to collect evidence. Evidence of the evil done by witches and wizards.'

'I have to admit,' remarked Caius to Hermione and the sad-eyed witch. 'I'm starting to like this one. He's sort of cool.'

'Even now you desecrate the memory of those who were killed here,' said Mr Marchelow, his eyes wide and staring with anger. 'It's no surprise. But you will be silent and you will dig.'

'Dig?' said Hermione.

'You are standing on a mass grave,' continued Mr Marchelow. 'Four years ago, the wizard organisation known as the Death Eaters killed 13 innocent people and threw their bodies into the pit that lies below us. You will dig until you reach the bodies that your fellow wizards left here. Then I will ask you again, what possible reason could mankind have for trusting wizards.'

'What was it you were saying earlier about desecrating the memory of the dead?' asked Hermione quietly.

'Dig!' shouted Mr Marchelow, his voice reverberating around the embankments that rose up around them and out into the night air.

They stood still, looking at him in horrified silence.

'Make them dig!' he commanded the other wizards.

The enchantment followed the next instant, compelling them to push the spades against the soil beneath them and start to move it away. Once they had dug up the first piece of turf, the command came again, forcing their limbs to repeat the action, again and again. Hermione's hands and legs started to feel sore from a physical exertion she wasn't used to. She looked up from her task. Mr Marchelow stood over her, a look of satisfaction on his face. Mr Morley stood a little way back. On his face there seemed to be no expression at all, only a blank registering of what was taking place.

They continued to dig, three holes widening and deepening at the bottom of the depression. Hermione felt her spade strike something hard. She looked down, the thought that this was a bad idea following a moment too late. Something pale and smooth was starting to protrude from the earth. Mr Marchelow seemed to spring towards her, she felt his hot, stale breath at the back of her neck. Then suddenly the enchantments that bound them and made them work seemed to falter, and they could move their limbs more freely. Caius was the first to throw down his spade. Hermione looked up and around. The three wizards and two witchfinders who had stood guard over them were now circled by a further cohort of wizards, their wands trained on them. The new wizards were wearing masks, masks of the kind Hermione had seen in the video recording of the torture scene.

'That's quite enough,' said a voice from behind one of the masks. Hermione thought she recognised the voice.


	15. The last of Harry Potter - Chapter 15

15\. An enemy's enemy

He saw a dark corridor before him, illuminated by light flooding in through a cloister. As he walked along the corridor, he could see the intricately carved stonework of an ancient wall, worn down and ridden with little pits and the marks left by generations of pupils. He wasn't walking alone: he was with a friend. He tried to see her face but couldn't make it out. They were walking with their backs to the light. That must be why their faces were shaded. She was talking to him, grasping him by the arm in her eagerness to tell him something, to give him some good advice. She was always giving him good advice. He strained to hear her voice, but the voice he heard wasn't quite the right one.

They turned a corner into another similar corridor then stopped before the door of a classroom. He listened for a moment. Inside he could hear a woman speaking. His friend touched him on the arm, this time in warning. 'Don't go in,' she said. 'I don't think it's a good idea.' For some reason he didn't want to take her advice. He pulled himself free of her grasp, knocked on the door and entered.

The pupils all sat quietly in their seats, listening intently to the teacher, a tall woman with long black hair and flashing green eyes. _I've seen her before._ But he had no idea where. She turned to the door, smiled and beckoned him to enter. There were two empty desks in the front row.

'Is one of those seats free?' he asked timidly.

'Of course,' said the teacher sweetly. 'One is for you and the other is for your friend.'

He looked towards the door. His friend stood on the threshold, a look of fear on her face. He hesitated, midway between the door and the desk.

'Won't you come in?' asked the teacher. 'I think you'll find this class fascinating.'

'I don't think so,' said the girl from the doorway.

'No need to be shy, either of you,' said the teacher, stepping out from behind her desk and down from the wooden platform. 'You know lots of people here already.'

He looked around at the other pupils in the class. They looked back at him silently, timorous at their desks. Some of the faces he did recognise, only he couldn't remember their names. There was a pale boy with dark, unruly hair; a tall dark-skinned boy; even Ilaria herself sat meekly in the corner, scarcely making eye contact with him. He continued to scan the multitude of faces: here was a boy with red hair he was sure he knew from somewhere, and next to him a red-haired girl, surely his sister. His breathing started to quicken at the sight of her. He started to move towards the red-haired girl, who looked at him with alarm as he approached, but the teacher caught him by the arm.

'Please don't, dear, you're scaring her.' He turned to face the teacher, his breathing quickly returning to normal, his heart beating slower.

'What's your name, Miss?' he asked.

'You can call me Lily,' said the teacher, a serene smile on her lips. She reached out and stroked his cheek.

'My mother's name was Lily,' he replied.

Suddenly the night sky was above him, the air cold and damp. He could still feel a hand stroking his cheek, but as he regained consciousness, he realised it wasn't the teacher who had the same name as his mother.

'James? James?'

_Ilaria_. She was stroking his cheek, leaning over him, her hair hanging down and almost touching his face, her pale, worried face framed by the night sky. He was lying down, apparently on grass, which felt cold and clammy beneath him. He twisted his head around slightly and could make out an angular, neoclassical church tower rising above them. He raised his head and Ilaria cradled it in her arms, reaching down and kissing him softly on the cheek. They were in a garden that lay in the precincts of the church whose tower he had just glimpsed. Beyond the garden's railings and brick walls were smart, elegant buildings with few lights on.

He started to remember: they had met on the bridge, she had seemed terribly worried, as if he had been lost. They had hurried away from the crowds on the riverside, onto the streets that lay behind it, first along a main road then onto back streets lined with brick houses, finally stopping at the gate to a little public garden. To their surprise it was unlocked, so they had gone in to rest. 'We're just a few minutes away from the station now, anyway,' he remembered her saying. They had sat on a bench for a few minutes, and he remembered his mind wandering back to the bridge. After that, he surmised, he must have passed out.

As he raised his head from the grass, his mind groped for the bridge again. A dark hole of emptiness hung over it. His mind climbed the steps, trying to get up onto the bridge. Something was waiting for him there. But halfway up the steps he stopped. _The reckoning, that's what's up there_. He wanted to flee again, flee into unconsciousness. He put his hand on the grass and it felt numb. The numbness was a reminder too. A reminder of something his hands had done.

'James! No! Stay with me!' Ilaria said to him, her voice suddenly loud with panic.

He seemed to see her lips moving silently, as if she was speaking another language, her mother tongue. His mind seemed to relax and clear. The numbness in his hands was gone, the bridge distant, just another bridge over the Thames. He saw her frown as she scrutinised his face. She turned around abruptly, scanning the garden around them and the dark buildings that lay beyond it. _Ask her what happened on the bridge_. But he couldn't. He had to change the subject.

'You never did tell me how you came to Britain,' he said suddenly, smiling back at her.

She looked back at him, smiled and kissed him on the lips, repeating the words _Grazie a dio_ twice under her breath.

'I didn't tell you, it's true,' she said, looking at him earnestly, her eyes shining. 'But how come you're thinking about it now?'

'I don't know,' he said, sitting up. 'I just thought of it.'

She kneeled down next to him on the grass, slipped her arms around his neck and pressed her head against his temple.

'Of course I'll tell you,' she said softly. 'Then in a few minutes when you're feeling better we can go together to the station. We still have some time before the train goes.'

'Ok,' he said. 'You're sure we should still go to Paris?'

'More than ever,' she replied. 'Anyway, I was going to tell you why I came to Britain. I came to go to school. My father sent me to a boarding school when I was eleven.'

'Ok,' he replied. 'But why Britain? Weren't there any schools good enough in Italy?'

She pushed a strand of hair behind her ear.

'Oh they were fine. But we had some problems there. We moved about a lot, but wherever we moved, after a while something would happen.'

'What do you mean?'

She hesitated, looked away for a moment then looked back at him, smiling a naïve kind of smile.

'I mean some … incident would happen.'

'You mean like getting bullied or something?'

She nodded, a sharper look in her eye.

'Yes, there was bullying involved. I don't know if you ever experienced …'

Here she hesitated again.

'… I don't know if you know the feeling, when people, like other children, just decide that there's something different about you, not right about you?'

He tried to sift through his empty, useless brain. It did evoke some sort of palpable feeling.

'I think I know what you mean,' he said. 'But looking at you, knowing you, it's hard to imagine that other children would find something to dislike.'

'Well, they did,' she said forlornly. 'They saw something in me that was different. The last time it happened, some older boys from my school followed me home, shouting names at me. I moved fast, so they never caught me, but they threw stones at our house, shouted names at me, even at my family.'

He pulled himself upright and put his arms around her. She settled herself against his shoulder, shivering slightly.

'The neighbours never did anything to help us,' she continued, 'and the police didn't want to know either. After that, we packed our things and moved away.'

'I'm sorry, I'm sorry,' he murmured. 'It must have been terrible.'

'It was. We went to Milan, where we lived in a hotel for a while. That was when my father took the decision to send me to Britain, to school. And I'm glad he did. I never had any problems there.'

She was shivering more intensely now, and he had started to shiver as well.

'I think the grass is a bit wet,' she said in a low voice.

'We should be going,' he said, squeezing her tighter. 'You're getting cold.'

She looked up slightly from his shoulder and nodded.

'Yes, let's go now,' she said quietly. They stood up quickly and slipped quickly out of the garden, Ilaria closing the gate behind them.

* * *

Hermione's head spun. She had apparated too many times that night, mostly against her will. She looked around to check for Caius and the witch who had been held captive with them. To her relief they were sitting either side of her on a rather musty-smelling sofa. She looked around to see where they had been taken this time. The room they were in was poorly lit, but she could make out its tall ceilings and rather dingy patterned wallpaper. The room was also rather cold. Overall it had a vaguely Grimmauld Place-esque air. As she turned her head to take in her surroundings, she realised that no enchantment held her in place. She looked down at her hands, which were sore and slightly blistered from the digging.

'Are you ok?' she said, addressing both Caius and the witch almost immediately.

'Yeah, fine,' replied Caius, smiling at her through the gloom. The witch nodded but didn't speak.

'Did you see what happened, before we disapparated?' Hermione asked.

'I saw a bit,' Caius replied. 'I saw the wizards in the masks moving in on the witchfinders' wizards, and I saw one of them grab hold of us. Then we were gone.'

'You thought Morley and Marchelow were witchfinders too?' Hermione asked.

'What else could they be?' replied Caius. 'But who'd have thought witchfinders would have their own tamed wizards?'

'They are witchfinders,' said the witch, speaking for the first time. 'At least, that Mr Marchelow calls himself one.'

'He would,' remarked Caius.

'He's horrible,' said the witch. 'I never knew there were Muggles like him. He made me prove that I was a witch.'

'Prove it? How?' asked Hermione.

'That wizard who serves him cursed me,' the witch continued. 'I don't know what the spell was, but it was like it… entered me and forced me to recite the incantations of spells I'd cast. Spell after spell, but just the words, without the spell actually happening.'

Hermione had heard of such a spell. It was a version of _priori incantatem_, used in earlier times to extract proof that a wizard had committed an unforgivable curse. But it had been banned for fifty years at least.

'It felt like I was vomiting,' the witch continued, her eyes wide with horror. 'The words came out of me like I was being sick, over and over again. One spell would have been proof enough. But I must have regurgitated every spell I did in the last year before he got the wizard to stop. Before he was satisfied. Satisfied that I was a witch, so he said.'

'And they wanted _us_ to condemn that torture film,' remarked Caius drily.

'I can't believe it,' said Hermione. 'Who was that wizard? He should be arrested.'

'His name's Fitz-something,' said the witch. 'He came leering towards me out of nowhere on the street. Said he saw me with a wand in my hand. I thought he was some kind of lunatic.'

_Quite possibly he is_.

'What's your name?' she asked the witch.

'Serena. Serena Lynch,' the witch replied. Hermione looked at her more closely. When she had first seen her, she had thought her to be not much more than a teenager, but up close she seemed older. She was small and there was almost something childlike about her, but there were little crow's feet around her wide eyes and her skin seemed dry and worn. She was probably somewhere in her thirties, Hermione decided.

'I'm Hermione,' said Hermione. 'This is Caius.'

'I know who you are,' said Serena. 'I recognised you as soon as I saw you. I couldn't believe the witchfinders had captured you.'

'Yes, I was a bit distracted,' Hermione replied, the events on the bridge suddenly coming back to her.

'Speaking of which,' said Caius, 'do you think we should be getting out of here?'

'Probably,' replied Hermione. But she was curious as to who had rescued them. It struck her as odd, and possibly a good sign, that whoever had brought them to that place had seemingly not placed any charms on them to hold them there.

She stood up, partly to test whether there were any enchantments in place after all. As nothing seemed to impede her movements, she began to walk around the room. At the far end of the room was a window, covered over with a long, dark curtain. She lifted the curtain and saw the typical buildings of a London street in darkness, a fairly upmarket area by the looks of it. Letting go of the curtain, she crossed the room again, this time in the direction of a door on its opposite side. She reached the door and rather gingerly touched the doorknob. _No trace of magic_. Caius was by now on his feet too. Serena Lynch stayed fixed to the sofa, her knees pushed together.

Hermione pushed on the door and it yielded, quite easily. The corridor outside was dark. But as she leaned out into the dark a wand light came towards her.

'Don't be going just yet,' called a voice, not from the dark, but from behind her in the room.

By the time she had turned round from the door, a man was already standing in the middle of the room. He had no wand in his hand, but he must have just apparated there. Caius had quickly drawn his wand, but was already lowering it.

'No need for that,' said the man. He was young, tall and slim with curly black hair and tanned skin. 'You're in no danger here.'

He went over to Serena, who was still sitting on the sofa, looking up at him.

'Are you ok?' he asked.

'I'm ok,' she replied swiftly.

'Did they hurt you?'

She nodded.

'They had a rather sick way of proving that she's a witch,' remarked Hermione.

'I'll bet they did', replied the man, who had a slight trace of a foreign accent.

'We should be thanking you, I suppose,' said Hermione rather circumspectly.

'Who are you, by the way?' added Caius.

The wizard half-grinned.

'That's a fair question,' he agreed. 'My name is Tobias Destrument.'

The name wasn't familiar. _Maybe he's a foreign wizard_.

Tobias Destrument stuck out his hand. After a moment's hesitation she shook it.

'I'm Hermione Granger,' she replied.

'I know,' he said.

'They always do,' added Caius sardonically.

'Actually far fewer people than you think know who I am,' Hermione replied.

'How I wish I'd been there that night when you fought off Voldemort and the Death Eaters,' said Tobias Destrument, a look of reverence in his eyes.

'It wasn't much fun, I can tell you,' Hermione replied.

'I can only imagine what it must have been like,' Tobias continued. 'We were in awe once we heard the reports. My family raised a hundred toasts to you, and to the fallen. Since then I've become something of a student of the Battle of Hogwarts: who fought on what side; the stages of the battle; who died and who survived. But seeing you here, I realise I know pretty much nothing. I've never even set foot inside Hogwarts. And here in front of me I have not one but two people who fought there.'

He glanced quickly at Caius and gave him a short bow. Looking slightly aghast at Tobias Destrument, Hermione did what she always did when reminded of the battle, which was to try to picture the people who had died there in happier times. _Professor Lupin. Fred. Tonks_.

'I really don't know what to say,' Hermione murmured after a few moments of silence.

'I understand,' said Tobias Destrument. 'I'm sorry if I came across as a bit obsessed. It's just that I do take what happened very seriously.'

'Quite rightly,' said Hermione, the lump in her throat more or less under control.

'I think he's right too,' said Serena Lynch, who had got up from the sofa and joined them in the meantime. 'I lived through those times. And I remember how I felt when I heard the news.'

Everyone was silent for a few moments

'I'm Serena, by the way,' Serena added, almost apologetically.

'Changing the subject,' Caius remarked, 'much as I would have liked to continue digging of course … but how come you were on hand to rescue us from the witchfinders?'

'Yes, how come?' asked Hermione, a little worried that Tobias Destrument had been following them too that evening.

'Oh, whenever we can we like to keep track of new vow wizards like Skelton and Goodwin' said Destrument with disgust. 'Digging around for the graves of Voldemort's victims with their witchfinder friends is one of their favourite pursuits. Making prisoners dig their holes for them is a new one, though. How come you were their prisoners, anyway?'

'New vow wizards?' Hermione echoed, avoiding his question.

'Oh, you mean the Ministry hasn't heard of them?' said Destrument, his eyebrows arched in surprise.

'Well,' Hermione replied, almost blushing. 'I can't speak for the Ministry. I don't know everything that goes on there.'

'Maybe your Aurors know something about them,' replied Destrument. 'Or if they don't, they should.'

'I'll look into it,' Hermione replied. _And I definitely will too_.

'Still,' put in Caius, 'the idea that wizards are helping witchfinders sounds sort of ridiculous.'

'It sounds ridiculous, but it's really happening,' added Tobias Destrument.

'But what for?' said Hermione.

'They told me that they don't believe that wizards should be a secret anymore,' said Serena. 'They asked me: _What possible justification is there for wizards to remain secret? What have wizards got to hide?_ That's what they said. That's how it started. And they kept saying to me: _Why don't you admit that you're a witch?_ But why would I admit to being a witch in front of a Muggle who obviously doesn't like witches? So I refused to admit it. That's when they cursed me to make me confess.'

She shuddered visibly at the memory.

'Wizards will have to hide if we ever get exposed,' added Tobias Destrument. 'Hide from mobs and lynchings.'

'Don't you think that's a bit exaggerated?' said Hermione.

'Didn't you hear what she just said?' said Destrument, his tone rising slightly. 'The outside world hates us. Or is suspicious of us at best. And now there are even a few of them who have lackeys inside our world. They say they've taken a new vow: something about a new openness between wizards and Muggles. But I think they're positioning themselves just in case wizarding society _is_ ever exposed.'

The door opened and another man entered. He was older than Tobias Destrument, perhaps in his late thirties, shaven headed and with dark circles around his eyes.

'This is Xavier. Xavier Belhaine,' said Destrument, pointing to the man, who nodded politely to Hermione, Serena and Caius.

'Are you ready to speak to him now?' said Xavier Belhaine to Tobias Destrument. Hermione recognised his voice: it was the voice of the masked man on the video recording.

'Yes,' said Destrument. He eagerly turned to the others. 'When we rescued you from the new vow wizards, we managed to capture one of them too. A particularly nasty one too. Do you want to see what kind of wizards work for witchfinders?'

'No thanks,' said Hermione. 'I don't think I want to see you torturing a prisoner.'

'Who said we're going to torture him?' asked Destrument.

'We were shown a video recording of this man torturing a witchfinder,' said Hermione.

'By Mr Morley, I presume,' said Destrument.

'Well, if you can tell us that the recording he showed us was faked, go ahead,' Hermione retorted.

'It wasn't faked,' said Xavier Belhaine. 'But it wasn't an unforgivable curse. We never use those.'

'I don't know the curse you used,' remarked Caius. 'But it looked pretty nasty to me.'

'I know what that curse feels like,' said Destrument. 'It looks worse than it is.'

'Oh sorry,' said Caius. 'So it's mild torture you go in for round here?'

'It is mild,' said Xavier Belhaine. 'The wizard we have in the next room would have no problem doing worse. It's Fitzroger, Marchelow's very own wizarding assistant.'

'He's the one who tortured me,' said Serena, her eyes opaque with anger.

'So you're descending to his level, is that right?' said Hermione.

'The wizard in there just likes torturing people for fun,' replied Belhaine. 'We actually want information out of him. Information that will benefit you and the Ministry in the end.'

'I don't think I want that kind of information,' replied Hermione.

'Look, nobody said we're going to torture him,' said Destrument. 'I want you to see what kind of person he is. We won't harm him. We don't do those sorts of things.'

'You're the good guys, I suppose?' Hermione remarked.

'We are. But it's important that these new vow wizards know that we know about them, that they can't act with impunity. Especially if the Ministry doesn't know about them.'

'Who says the Ministry doesn't know about them?' exclaimed Hermione.

'Or isn't doing anything about them,' put in Belhaine.

'That's even less likely.'

'Come and see anyway,' Destrument repeated.

'I don't think I want to,' replied Hermione.

'Come and see,' Destrument insisted, this time grabbing her arm.

'Let go of her arm,' said Caius, suddenly pulling out his wand.

'I don't need your protection,' Hermione retorted, looking angrily at Tobias Destrument. 'I just want to leave.'

'I want to see him,' said Serena quietly.

'Are you sure you want to, Serena? What good will it do you?' said Hermione.

'I want to see,' Serena replied in the same determined tone.

'Come on then,' said Destrument. 'Then you can go.'

'What information do you want to get from him anyway?' asked Hermione as they stood before a closed door.

'We just have one question,' replied Destrument. 'I should think it's the same question you would want to ask him yourself.'

'What's that?' asked Hermione. _What have I missed?_ The thought that she had been unobservant rankled with her.

'How come Morley and Marchelow know real wizards in the first place?'

_Oh goodness, how obvious._ It now struck her that the whole evening had been one failure after another, and how slow-witted she had become in the face of real danger. _That's what four years of complacency does to you._

'So he's in there?' said Hermione, pointing to the door.

'Oh yes,' said a new voice, one that sounded familiar. A girl was standing beside the door. Presumably she had exited the room behind it without making any noise. She looked no more than about eighteen. She bore a strong resemblance to Tobias Destrument, only she had very pale skin, lank dirty blonde hair and had an almost emaciated face.

'Is there any chance he'll be willing to talk?' asked Xavier Belhaine.

The girl smiled.

'Oh, very little chance.'

Hermione felt a sinking sort of feeling in her stomach. _She's the one who cast the curse in the video._

The wizard called Fitzroger was tied to a chair in the middle of the room, his face several shades whiter than it had been before. He scowled as they entered the room.

'So you got the Ministry on your side?' he remarked, looking pointedly at Hermione. She wondered if the threat of the Ministry might be enough to persuade him to answer the question they all had. She glanced again at the washed out, sullen girl who had joined them. There was no way she was going to let her curse the prisoner.

'The Ministry has to get involved,' Hermione began in her most official-sounding voice. 'This appears to be a case of wizards revealing our existence to muggles. To… witchfinders at that.'

She could hardly believe she was saying the word.

'I didn't tell them,' said Fitzroger brashly. 'And I don't know who did. It's not my fault if the Ministry's got careless about erasing muggles' memories.'

'It hasn't,' Hermione replied.

As she spoke, she realised that the next thing she would have to say was that someone would be dispatched to do just that to Messrs Morley and Marchelow. She could almost see the look on Mr Morley's face.

Fitzroger snorted.

'I suppose you're going to send the boys round to deal with the witchfinders?'

He looked around his audience.

'It's like some kind of police state. Oh, it's all smiling faces and we must protect the muggles these days, but that's what it boils down to.'

'A police state?' Caius remarked. 'And I suppose you're a pro-democracy movement?'

'Are you really trying to tell me,' Hermione put in, 'that you see no difference between how things are now and how they were when Voldemort took control of the Ministry?'

'You're wasting your time,' remarked Tobias Destrument.

'Please let me do my job,' Hermione replied. _What a bad actor I am_. 'Do you think it's a good idea for people like Mr Marchelow to know about the existence of wizards?' she continued, shivering as she recollected his speech at the unmarked grave.

Fitzroger smiled.

'I believe in a world where wizards shouldn't have to go around wiping Muggles' memories,' he said calmly.

'How touching,' remarked Destrument, suddenly stepping forward.

'Shall I try?' said the pale witch, her wand suddenly pointed at Fitzroger.

'No!' Hermione shouted.

Destrument looked at Hermione and then at the witch. The resemblance between them was striking. _She's either his sister or a slightly unsuccessful clone of him._

'Wait, let me try,' said Serena, approaching the wizard.

'Serena, I don't think you want to …' said Hermione.

'I'm not going to do anything like that,' said Serena, glancing at the pale witch and then at Fitzroger closely. He stared at her in silence.

'Give it to him,' said the pale witch quietly. 'He deserves it after what he did to you.'

'Serena, don't,' said Hermione.

Serena looked the prisoner right in the eyes. He stared back, his head trembling as if he was trying to break out of the grip her gaze held him in.

'Tell us,' she began in a quiet tone, 'how do the witchfinders know about us?'

Fitzroger seemed petrified in her gaze.

'All I know,' he said, his voice faltering, 'is that it started with Mr Morley. Charlie Skelton was the one sent to erase his memory. But he persuaded him not to. I don't know how he did it.'

A few moments of silence followed, but Serena kept Fitzroger's gaze locked in hers.

'But why did his memory need to be erased?'

'I don't know.'

After a few more seconds, Serena released him from her gaze.

'He's telling the truth,' she said mournfully.


	16. The last of Harry Potter - Chapter 16

16\. Restitution of the wand

'Their train will have left by now,' said Caius, pointing up at the illuminated clock across the water.

'I know,' replied Hermione.

They were back on the South Bank, the river in front of them and the concrete battlements of Queen Elizabeth Hall at their backs.

Tobias Destrument had let them go soon after the new vow wizard had been released. The pale witch, who was indeed Destrument's sister, had been impressed by Serena's interrogation of him, going so far as to ask if she wanted to join them. But Serena had refused, saying she just wanted to be left alone, and they had left, Hermione half-promising, half-threatening to write a report for work on everything she had seen that evening.

They had apparated together to the front step of Serena's mother's house, where she had decided to spend the night in case her house was under surveillance by witchfinders. Hermione had left Isaac Edwards' business card with Serena - he would be only too pleased to help her - and then she and Caius had set off again.

'So do you think this is going to work?' Hermione asked.

The only way to catch up with Harry and Ilaria was to apparate onto their train. Apparating onto a moving object was not straightforward, let alone one moving so fast.

'It's the same principle as for something stationary, only you have to concentrate a bit differently,' Caius replied. 'Think about the distance the train would cover in about seven seconds and imagine the train's actually that long. It gives you a larger area to grab onto.'

Hermione frowned.

'Do we have to know exactly at what time it left the station and how fast it's been travelling?'

'No, none of that. It's just about visualising a fast-moving object and anticipating where it's going. It's a technique all good seekers use.'

Hermione frowned again.

'Yes, but I was never any good at quidditch. And unless I'm missing something, a seeker's not usually fifty miles away from the golden snitch during the game.'

Caius smiled and held out his hand.

'Trust me,' he said. Recalling Harry's praise for Caius's skills as a seeker, Hermione stuck out her hand to take his.

They heard the roar of the train before they could see it, and even from inside the apparation the speed at which it was moving was terrifying. They seemed to bump against the outside of the window and for an instant it seemed as if the train had outrun them, but the next moment they were inside, pinned against a luggage rack between carriages. Caius twisted his head round at Hermione and grinned at her.

'150 points to Slytherin.'

'Very funny,' Hermione replied. 'But maybe that wasn't so impressive after all: a train is a bit bigger than a golden snitch.'

She shifted her position to lean out of the luggage rack, squinting through the tinted plexiglass into the carriages in front and behind.

'I don't think anyone saw us,' she added. Fortunately the nearest seats were all pointed in the opposite direction.

'I suppose we should try and find them, just to check they are actually on this train,' remarked Caius.

'Ok,' said Hermione, 'but we can hardly just go strolling into each carriage until we find them.'

'It would be quite funny, just to see the look on Ilaria's face,' replied Caius, 'but you're right, it's probably not the best idea. So I suppose we need disguises.'

'I suppose so,' said Hermione.

Since a major change in appearance would require a kind of magic that couldn't be done on the spot in a moving railway carriage, they had to rely on low-level charms. Hermione straightened her hair and dyed it black, added large, thick-rimmed glasses and adjusted her nose until it looked rather like Pansy Parkinson's. The addition of spectacles and a change in hair colour were fairly easily achieved, but the hair straightening and the change in nose involved more complex charms. Caius also added glasses, opting for oval, steel-rimmed frames, dyed his hair grey and added a pepperpot beard. For his final flourish he made his hairline recede rather alarmingly. Hermione couldn't help but laugh as he admired himself in the window, a mock-serious expression on his face.

'Is that what you'll look like in 25 years?' she asked.

'Wouldn't you like to know,' he replied with a wink.

They made their way through the train in opposite directions. It was Caius who located Harry and Ilaria two carriages away. He summoned Hermione by calling her on the rather ancient mobile phone that she had acquired for him for the purpose of the mission. Although he claimed not to approve of them, he seemed to know how to use one fairly well. By the time they had settled down on folding seats between carriages to wait out the rest of the journey, the train was making its way swiftly across the farmland of northern France, which was all but invisible in the enveloping darkness outside the train window.

'It's a bit disconcerting sitting here with you in that disguise,' Hermione murmured to Caius over the train's white noise.

'That's no way to speak to your elders,' came the reply.

Hermione shook her head but smiled in spite of herself.

'I haven't done a very good job of watching your back so far,' he said rather mournfully, after a few more moments of noisy silence. 'Sorry about that.'

'Don't worry,' said Hermione. 'We're only just getting started. You'll get another chance later.'

It was late evening when they arrived at the Gare du Nord. As expected, Henoc Lutumba was waiting for Ilaria on the concourse. Hermione and Caius lingered in the shadows of the platform and watched as he embraced Ilaria warmly and shook Harry by the hand, his brow furrowed with concern. As far as they could make out, meeting Henoc didn't seem to have any immediate impact on Harry.

Outside the station, Henoc, Ilaria and Harry got into a car with tinted windows and diplomatic licence plates. For a few moments after the car had pulled away, Hermione and Caius stood on the pavement, breathing in the cool night air. Hermione muttered a tracing charm under her breath, trying not to draw attention to herself. Then they walked straight down the avenue that led away from the station, disapparating out of the first alleyway they came across.

* * *

The chauffeur-driven car that had picked them up made rapid progress through the night-time streets of Paris. Throughout the journey the chauffeur kept up an animated conversation with Henoc, at times directing the odd question or remark in French at the passengers in the back seat. Ilaria's French seemed to be good enough to provide him with acceptable responses. They crossed the Ile de la Cité and passed onto the Left Bank, where the streets were still thronged with revellers and tourists. They passed the gates of the Jardin de Luxembourg and continued past Port Royal until they reached Place Denfert-Rochereau, which the car exited at excessive speed onto the Rue Froidevaux before pulling up in front of an impressive Parisian building.

'Here we are,' said Henoc, gesturing for them to get out of the car. They stepped out onto the street and looked around them.

'We're on the fourth floor,' he continued, pointing up to an elaborate bay window jutting out above them. A sharp breeze had started to blow, causing dead leaves to dance around their feet and scatter over the tarmac.

They ascended in silence to the fourth floor in an ancient, but recently renovated elevator. Henoc opened the tall oak door and ushered them into the hall of the apartment, switching on the lights. Inside the apartment was a pungent smell of dust and furniture polish. It was elegantly decorated, with high ceilings, but sparsely furnished. Their room was in the same smart but sombre decor. The shutters were open, and an orange glare from the streetlights pervaded the room. Ilaria dropped her bag and wandered the apartment, making complimentary noises as she looked around. Then she opened the window and leaned out into the street, beckoning them to join her. When they looked to the left they could make out a tall, shimmering skyscraper. Beneath them was a mass of greenery enclosed behind stone walls, crisscrossed by myriad avenues jostling with what looked like miniature stone houses.

'Is that a cemetery down there?' he asked.

* * *

The accommodation that Caius had arranged for them was located to the rear of a seedy cabaret bar on a narrow side street off the Rue de Gaieté, in a hotel that from the outside seemed utterly derelict. The paint was peeling off the ancient, narrow building and the windows in the upper floors were boarded up. An ancient, faded sign on the wall read 'Pelletier' in barely legible letters. Before Hermione could say anything, Caius whipped out his wand and muttered an enchantment. In an instant the building cast off its dilapidated exterior: the dark, boarded-up windows were lit at once, a fresh pastel pink paint job covered the walls and a flashing neon sign appeared over the door. They ascended a short flight of steps up to a glass door. A brass plaque by the side of the door read: 'Recommended by the _Wandering Wizard_ travel guides'.

The receptionist recited the terms and conditions of the establishment in an accented, sleep-heavy voice, which concluded with a less than convincing: 'Welcome to the Hotel Pelletier. Enjoy your stay'. With a languid wave of his wand, two door keys in the form of miniature wands floated off the shelf behind him and onto the reception desk. 'Third floor' were his last words to Hermione and Caius as he pointed them vaguely in the direction of the stairs.

They ascended the narrow and dimly lit staircase. Their rooms were opposite one another on the third floor landing.

Once they were out on the streets of Paris, they dropped the disguises.

'As long as we keep a reasonable distance from them we shouldn't need them,' was Hermione's reasoning.

'Ok, but how long are we going to tail them for anyway?' asked Caius, pulling his coat tighter around him. The day was colder than they had expected, the sky a pale grey colour.

'I don't know,' Hermione replied. She really didn't.

A pattern soon became clear to them as they followed Harry and Ilaria through the streets. They would enter a guidebook district of the city, like the Ile de la Cité, the Sorbonne and Cluny, Rivoli or St Germain, take no more than a brief glimpse of the main sights then wander off into smaller surrounding streets, eventually resting and sheltering from the cold in a backstreet café. Sitting in the same café was mainly to be avoided, but it was usually possible to find another one nearby. Hermione and Caius took it in turns to cast faint tracing charms in case they lost sight of them, keeping them deliberately weak so that Ilaria couldn't pick up on their presence.

Mid-afternoon, they were sitting in the back of a café a couple of streets back from the Musée d'Orsay, sipping on what was probably one cup of coffee too many, when Harry and Ilaria actually walked in, evidently having changed their minds about where to stop for a drink. Hermione watched in frozen silence as they picked out a table close to the terrace, Ilaria sliding into the seat next to Harry. _She_ ordered the drinks, and _she_ seemed to be doing most of the talking. Although their voices were out of earshot, Hermione could clearly see Ilaria's hand gestures, her bangles sliding about on her wrists in response to the movement of her hands. She could see the polka dot sleeve of her blouse protrude past the end of her cardigan whenever she touched him on the arm or reached into the small maroon leather bag she kept on the table in front of her. Sometimes she would laugh at a remark of his, and sometimes he would laugh at something she said, reaching out for her hand and clasping it in his. They would turn to kiss each other often, their silhouettes blurring as their lips came together. At this point Hermione would look away.

Exhaustion crept up on her as late afternoon blurred into early evening. When Caius suggested they go back to the hotel, she numbly agreed, casting a final, slightly stronger tracing charm as they watched Harry and Ilaria wait for a bus, holding each other tightly as they leaned against the side of the bus stop.

She stretched out on her hotel bed, pulling the duvet half over her, enough to start to chase the chill out of her body, and she quickly fell into a torpor.

The sound of gentle but insistent knocking on the door pulled her up out of the shallow, dark hole she had slipped into.

'If you just want to sleep that's ok,' came Caius's voice through the door.

'No, I have to wake up,' she mumbled in reply. 'Come back in a few minutes, all right?'

'Ok,' he said, a little brighter. She stumbled across the room, whose dimensions were annoyingly cramped, and went to douse her face with cold water in the bathroom.

'So do you think they saw us?' she asked, her legs sprawled on the floor, her back propped against the end of the bed. By _they_ she really meant _she_.

'I don't think so,' Caius replied, also sitting on the carpet, his back against the brightly wallpapered wall. They were in the part of the room where the floor was widest, passing between them a bottle of iced tea Hermione had bought in a convenience store jammed full of tourists.

'You don't think there was an element of _display_ in how she was behaving?'

He seemed to grimace slightly in reply.

'If she really saw us, wouldn't she just make an excuse for them to leave then try to disappear? Or even come over and tell us to get lost.'

Hermione took a swig of the iced tea then handed him the bottle.

'Your first idea is plausible. I can't see her doing the second.'

She prised a piece of lint out of the carpet. _You know her better than I do. Maybe it wasn't deliberate. I suppose that's how she really feels about him_.

'So how come you were in Slytherin anyway?' she asked, jerking her head up to look across at him.

A guarded sort of a smile slipped out onto his face.

'I suppose I should take that as a compliment. If only it wasn't also an insult to Slytherin.'

She smiled reluctantly.

'You know what I mean. When I was at Hogwarts, I'd have been amazed to find out there was anyone in Slytherin who didn't hate me.'

'Well, being a muggle-born member of Gryffindor and best friends with Harry Potter, you never stood much of a chance.'

She looked down, sighed, then looked up again.

'That makes you all the more of an oddity. So again, how come you're in Slytherin?'

He paused to consider his answer.

'It's sort of a family tradition,' he began.

'Like the Malfoys.'

'And the Weasleys. And goodness knows how many other families. There are Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff dynasties too, as I'm sure you know.'

She nodded,

'Yes, I know.'

'And when I was 11, just like Harry, there was one house I didn't want to be sorted into. I don't have to tell you which one.'

'I didn't realise he'd told you that.'

He shrugged.

'When he told me I knew we'd reached a point where we'd put the old prejudices behind us.'

'You sort of did that when you stayed to fight at Hogwarts.'

'Yeah, but it doesn't mean that I set aside the tradition of my house.'

'You still call it your house?'

'Of course.'

'What did you have against Gryffindor, by the way?'

Caius grinned.

'No offence, but I always thought of you as being a bit full of yourselves.'

'Full of ourselves?' said Hermione. 'Surely your loyalty to the tradition of your house doesn't blind you to who your fellow Slytherins were?'

'Yeah, of course Slytherin people are full of themselves, but in a different way. We're outsiders because of our bad reputation, which is for the most part justified of course.'

'Outsiders?' Hermione sniffed. 'How can you call people like the Malfoys outsiders?'

'Even them. They're outsiders because no one likes them. And being disliked, that's what keeps us hungry. We almost have to be bad. If we didn't, we'd just sort of wither away.'

'Is that right?'

'It is. Gryffindor, on the other hand, I found to be too self-righteous, too obviously the headmaster's favourite. So I never liked them.'

'And what about now?' Hermione asked.

'I still prefer the grey and silver. I'm still never going to support Gryffindor in quidditch.'

'I see,' said Hermione, handing the two-thirds empty bottle back to Caius. 'By the way, is it true that Draco Malfoy crashed his broom into the River Avon the night Slytherin won the Quidditch Trophy?'

Caius laughed.

'Yes, totally true. Saw it with my own eyes. He was racing old Marcus Flint over and under the bridges in Bath. Probably not a good idea to get on a broom when you're completely rat-arsed (we all were admittedly), but he made a pretty good job of it, the halfway decent seeker that he is. He was probably going to win too, but he got too cocky going under the Pulteney Bridge and took an early bath.'

'What a shame,' Hermione remarked. She got up and went to the dresser on the other end of the room.''Do you want something else to drink?'

'Got anything stronger than ice tea?'

She glanced at him over her shoulder.

'No. Only normal tea. Will that do?'

'Go for it.'

_Now's the time to ask him more about Ilaria_, she thought as she made the tea. But when she returned to where he was sitting, she found she couldn't face speaking about her.

'How did you manage to get on with people like Malfoy?'

'I had to earn their respect. It's not easy being a first year in Slytherin, particularly when the likes of Crabbe and Goyle are in the next dormitory.'

'It sounds like a miserable life.'

'It wasn't that bad. I made friends like Ilaria and Henoc there.'

_Here's my chance_. She looked down into her tea as she sipped it. Caius raised his mug to his lips self-consciously, as if he was expecting the question, or inviting it. _I've spent the whole day looking at her, looking at her playing at being Harry's doe-eyed, dutiful girlfriend. I've had enough of her, at least for today._

They sat in silence for a few moments.

'So will it be more of the same tomorrow?' he asked.

'I suppose it'll have to be,' she replied after a brief pause. She smiled at him, her gaze quickly drifting away to a distant point.

The next day was a little warmer, and for a while pale, hazy sunshine brightened the morning. The itinerary passed through Beaubourg and into the Marais, where Ilaria and Harry met again with Henoc. After eating lunch together, the three of them went on to the Bastille before bending back towards the banks of the Seine, the day growing more overcast and more clammy. Their pace was slowing. Ilaria leaned more and more on Harry's arm, seemingly more out of tiredness than anything else. In the depths of the afternoon, as Caius and Hermione lingered in a small public square, they saw Ilaria walking out of the bar across the street, descend the steps to the Seine embankment and disapparate when she was out of sight of any passers-by. They briefly debated whether one of them should try and track Ilaria, before deciding that it would be better to stick to Harry.

* * *

He stayed on in the bar with Henoc for a while after Ilaria had gone back to the apartment. He had offered to come with her, but she insisted she was ok on her own.

'I just need a little rest,' she said. 'Then I'll be fine again.' At Henoc's suggestion, they went on to a different bar on the Ile Saint-Louis, but Henoc was soon called away by a telephone call from his family, which then triggered an urgent errand.

Having no desire to stay in the bar on his own, he finished his drink and wandered out into the street. He followed the island's narrow main street, running into the full stream of tourists where the street opened back onto the Seine. He had no destination in mind other than escaping the crowd. He didn't want to go back the way he came, so he crossed on the footbridge to the Ile de la Cité. He skirted round Notre Dame, hemmed in by crowds on all sides till he passed the Pont Neuf.

He stood on the bridge and looked down at the very tip of the island, which lay below him, close to the level of the water. A tiny garden was laid out there, down by the water's edge. _It looks peaceful down there_. The thought sounded rather mournful in his head, a little pathetic almost. Once he was down the steps, it was the water that drew his attention. He walked slowly and listlessly until he came across a solitary bench at the end of the island. With his back to the noise and crowds, he sat and looked out into the murky waters of the river. He hunched over, pulling the collar of his coat up to shelter his neck from the cold blowing up off the water, grimacing slightly at what felt like an itch inside his brain. It didn't hurt, but the sensation was strong enough to drive away any other thought. It was as if something was rubbing insistently at a long, closed-over scar.

After a time, his eye was caught by a ripple in the water just at the point where the concrete shore entered the river. He watched intently as a long, thin worm-like creature emerged from the water and made its way cautiously onto dry land. Quickly its long, green body crossed the path and disappeared into a muddy flowerbed. A faint rustling could be heard for a few instants, then silence. He looked down into the flowerbed, feeling no fear, only a burning curiosity. Silently he called out to the creature. After a few instants, it raised its head cautiously from behind a rose bush. He stretched out his hand and slowly it crawled out of the flowerbed and coiled itself around his outstretched arm. Its body was damp against his skin and smelt of earth and polluted water. He ran his finger down its length and it lowered its head against the back of his hand, like it was a cat or something. It turned its head slightly and looked at him with one eye.

'_Hungry_,' it said.

'How can I help you?' he asked.

'_Hungry_,' it repeated.

'What do you eat normally?'

'_Rats and mice and cockroaches and slimy things that swim in the river_.'

'Do you live in the river?'

'_In the river, on the land, in waters underground_.'

'Come with me,' he commanded the creature. He stood up suddenly and it slid off his arm.

'_Must stay hidden_,' it replied, looking up at him from the flowerbed. He looked around, his heart beating hard.

'Follow me, but underground,' he said finally.

'_Hungry_,' was all its reply, but it crawled deliberately across the path and through the grate of a storm drain. He took off quickly through the garden, ascended the steps back onto the bridge, and once again crossed the island. He could feel the creature following his route underground. He guided himself through the streets by instinct, certain that a route had been laid out for him.

He left the island and made for the Left Bank, where his progress was hindered yet again by swarms of tourists. As he listened out for movements in the sewers below, he could hear other voices that had added themselves to that of the first snake. He stood still in the open space in front of St Michael's Fountain, the din of the tourists bombarding his senses on the surface, while the hissing voices of countless snakes from below grew ever louder and more insistent. After nearly being hit by a taxi, he stepped off the boulevard onto a pedestrian street to his left, where the crowds were even worse. The noise in his head and all around him was becoming unbearable. The street before him began to irritate him intensely, appearing to him as a noisy obstacle to whatever it was he was seeking. He could almost feel the serpents clamouring for his attention, swaying at the touch of his hands. _This is no illusion_. He could hear his own voice clear inside his head. His own voice. He could almost put a name to it. The name that had got lost. _This is not madness,_ _it's magic_. And it was the most natural thing possible. He spoke out loud, raising his hands at his sides, as if he was about to deliver a sermon on the street.

'Magic is the truth.'

He raised his hand and dismissed the serpents. Within a few moments they reached the surface and began to emerge from drains and gutters and the cracks between buildings. The water snake was coming to him, up through a pipe and then out through a nozzle in the fountain, swaying through the water then gliding over the side.

He stood calmly in the middle of the street as pandemonium began to break out around him, looking on almost mesmerised as tourists ran in all directions, fleeing the plague of snakes that had suddenly descended on the Left Bank.

'Feed,' he said.

It felt as if a cavity had opened up in his brain. Thoughts were flowing freely, where before everything had been static; first they seemed like random words, but then they started to come together and form into incantations, spoken in the blood.

Hermione looked on in horror as Harry stood impassively in the midst of the chaos, snakes crawling around him, seemingly entranced by him. She looked across at Caius. He bowed his head slightly, pulling her gaze down to where his wand protruded from his sleeve into the palm of his hand. He shot her a questioning look.

'How can we do it without being seen?' she said.

'The snakes are on the ground,' he replied in a low voice. 'People are too busy running away to notice.'

She nodded. They had to do something. They started walking forward, pushing through the crowd moving mostly in the other direction. Caius struck first, stunning a snake that was rearing up dangerously at an Indian family. Hermione followed suit, doing the same to a snake crawling just a foot behind a middle-aged American woman. They weaved through the crowd, always keeping their wands concealed in their hands. They soon lost count of how many snakes they had stunned.

'We get him out of sight then disapparate,' said Caius tersely, all of a sudden back at her side. Harry was not far away from them, wandering aimlessly along the street. _Ok, let's do that_.

By now the emergency services had arrived and were trying to calm the frightened crowd. Hermione noticed that around the margins were what looked like plainclothes policemen, scanning the debacle in front of them and whispering tersely to one another. 'Who do you think they are?' she started to say. The next instant she heard Caius shout 'Hermione!' She turned but didn't see anything at first. Then a scorching sensation appeared in the air, just next to her leg. She looked down to see a brown snake flop to the ground and shrivel away to dust. It had been in the process of climbing onto her foot. She looked up and saw Caius, who nodded quickly at her.

'You ok?'

'Fine.'

She looked again for the plainclothes police she had seen before. Caius had seen them too. He quickly pointed one out to her. With a rush of fear she saw the man point at Harry and whisper something to his colleague. Then the two men started walking towards him, pushing their way through the crowd. Caius cast a discreet spell from where his wand was concealed half up his sleeve. The spell exploded with a loud crack just above the men's heads, engulfing them and those nearest to them in thick smoke. Hermione and Caius ran for Harry, vaporising any snakes they found in their path. They reached Harry and each grabbed an arm. He looked around at Hermione with glazed eyes, and repeated to her, in a rapturous voice:

'Magic is the truth.'

'I know it is,' she replied. 'Now let's get out of here!'

It was too risky to disapparate in the middle of a crowd of people, so they sought out a back alley from where they could make their escape. Harry offered no resistance, but seemed in no hurry to exit the scene, impeding their attempts to escape. By now the smokescreen had cleared, and their pursuers were gaining on them. The crowds were finally thinning out, and they were in sight of a narrow side street when one of the men got a hand to Caius and pulled him back sharply. Caius fell backwards, losing his grip on Harry's left arm.

'Keep going!' he shouted to Hermione, who looked back for a second, still clutching Harry's other arm. They turned onto the side street, Hermione still pulling a dazed Harry after her. But as they reached the relative quiet of the street, Hermione felt rough hands grab hold of her, pulling her away from Harry into the shadows of the alley.

'Harry!' she shouted at him. She hadn't stopped to think whether he would recognise his name, but even if she had, there was no way she was going to call him James Black. He looked on with the same glazed expression as she struggled with the dark-suited man who had grabbed her, seemingly not understanding what was happening. Then Hermione's attacker wrenched something out of her jacket, and it fell to the ground, rolling in his direction. His eyes alighted on the object and his gaze cleared. Slowly he kneeled down and picked up the object, turning it over in his hand for a few moments.

'This is my wand,' he said to himself. Then he stood up and spoke clearly, his voice echoing off the walls of the alleyway:

'_Stupefy_.'

Hermione's attacker was thrown against the wall, pulling her down in his wake. Harry came towards her, reaching out his hand to help her up.

'Are you ok?'

'I'm fine, thanks,' she replied as she pulled herself to her feet.

'You had my wand,' he said, in a rather off-hand manner. She scrutinised his expression. _He doesn't know me. Even if he's remembered he can do magic he still doesn't know me_.

'I was keeping it until I could give it back to you.'

'Why did you have it?' _He doesn't even remember we met in St Bride's churchyard._

'It's a long story.'

At that moment another dark-suited man came striding into the alleyway. Harry turned to face him.

'Drop your wands and come with me,' said the man.

Harry looked at the man but didn't lower his wand.

'It's me you want, not her. She didn't do anything.'

'We saw her and the other one stunning the snakes. Anyway, you're all wizards, you're all targets. You must be pretty stupid, to do such a thing right in the middle of Paris.'

'Wizards?' said Harry. 'Yes, I suppose I must be.'

'And soon you will be out of business. The Witchfinder will be here very soon.'

'The Witchfinder!' exclaimed Hermione.

'No one's, putting me out of business,' replied Harry, raising his wand, 'I'm just getting started. _Stupefy_.'

He walked out of the alleyway, glancing down every few moments at the wand in his hand, his heart pounding. He gripped it harder, squeezing it like an old friend. Then he remembered the girl in the alleyway. _She was keeping it for me._ He started to turn and go back, but then stopped. He considered going back and asking her why she had it, but as he looked again at the wand, it didn't seem to matter. All that mattered was that the wand was his, and it had come back to him. The girl would be all right: he had dealt with those men. Now he had things to find out; in fact, he had _everything _to find out. Outside the alley the crowds had calmed down and dispersed. He walked back at a determined pace towards the busy intersection. He felt exhilarated, but at the same time frustrated at all the time lost in ignorance of his power. He gripped his wand in his hand, shielding it from view of passers-by, and the power it wielded coursed through his body.


	17. The last of Harry Potter - Chapter 17

17\. Unseen hands

She was sleeping so peacefully, he could see, as he leaned over her. She slept on her side in a plain white camisole top, her dark hair spilling over the pillow, the edge of the duvet crossing her body diagonally. What remained of the light of day gleamed weakly through the slits between the blinds, but it was mostly dark that surrounded him.

He still had the wand in his hand. He had scarcely let it go since it came back to him. _It's mine. I know it is_. He felt his mind teeming with countless incantations, but he could summon none. It had worked that afternoon, the easiest thing in the world it had been.

Without any clear idea of what he was doing, he languidly pointed the wand at her as she slept on. His grip was so loose that the wand could almost drop from his hand. But it didn't slip. It remained neatly lodged in the palm of his hand, as if it was contented there. He leaned over further, sliding the wand towards her exposed shoulder. She made no movement as it touched her skin, but the wand itself seemed to recoil slightly, as if it had hit some invisible force repelling it. It travelled over the skin of her shoulder and passed between the splayed locks of her dark hair. _I'm not who you think I am_. Then he withdrew the wand, stepped away from the bed and left the room.

He scrutinised his face in the bathroom mirror, trying to identify the person in front of him. The green eyes interested him the most, much more than the pale skin, the long, dark, unruly hair and the beard. The name he thought went with that face was wrong. He had another name, his real name. It was close to him now, although still lurking out of sight.

He took out a razor, filled the sink with hot water and began to remove the beard. With the beard gone, reduced to a mass of floating black hair in the water, he found himself looking on a younger face than he had imagined. Perhaps he had lost fewer years to amnesia than he had thought.

He thought of the girl in the alleyway and a pang of regret passed quickly through him. He hoped she was all right. _Harry_, she had called him. He murmured the name to himself, as if to try it on. But no light came on when he said it. Was it really him she had been speaking to? Maybe the shock and the fear had made her call out for the person in her life she thought most likely to protect her. _Harry. I've been called that before_. A hipsterish sort of girl had stopped him on Clerkenwell Road, on his way home from work. She had insisted his name was Harry. He had thought it was a joke of course, planned over drinks in the student union. He retraced his steps, from Clerkenwell Road, left onto Hatton Garden, across Holborn, down Fetter Lane, onto Fleet Street, then down that narrow lane to St Bride's churchyard. _I've done something terrible_. _You can't make me better_.

He was back by the side of the bed. It had got darker outside while he had been in the bathroom. He ran his hand across his smooth chin, just beneath his mouth, and grinned to himself. He reached out and turned up the edge of the duvet, gently throwing it open. He took off his t-shirt and slid into the bed next to her. She moved slightly without waking, leaning against him as she sensed his presence in the bed. He rested his head on hers and snaked an arm around her waist.

When he closed his eyes he was walking a dreary stone corridor. He looked down and saw that he was wearing school uniform. _Is this some extra year of school_? He turned the corner and went down the stairs in front of him. They were ancient, well-worn stone steps. He went down two floors then came out into a narrower, darker corridor. About halfway down the corridor a boy was standing alone, silently watching him approach, a look of quiet satisfaction on his face. The boy had pale blonde hair and held his wand casually at his side. His school tie had a different colour from his: green and silver instead of maroon and gold.

'You decided to come, then,' the blonde boy said.

'I did,' he replied.

The boy eyed him coldly.

'You'd better come inside.' He cast a charm and a doorway opened in front of them. They passed through the doorway into a dour, high-ceilinged hall. In the middle of the hall was an open space, flanked on both sides by green leather sofas. The sofas were filled with schoolchildren of different ages, all wearing the same green and silver colours on their uniform. Among them he could see Ilaria, Henoc and other faces he half-recognised. The other pupils watched in silence, some smirking to themselves, others deadly serious, as the blonde boy led him to the middle of the open space.

'Here,' the boy said, turning swiftly to face him.

He nodded swiftly and took up the position indicated to him. The blonde boy raised his wand and held it diagonally so that it was pointed at his head. He took out his wand and did the same so that the two wands were crossed in mid-air and touching slightly.

'Cast them off,' said the blonde boy.

'I cast them off,' he replied. His colours changed to green and silver. The blonde boy smiled to himself.

'Continue,' he said.

He began to recite the words he had learned.

_No quarter for the enemy _

_No sympathy for the weak _

_No friendship save among us. _

_Magic is mastery, magic is genius, magic is our right. _

_The light has shined on us._

As he spoke the final words, incantations burst out of the crossed wands, entering the two of them. The charm was like cold molten metal, coursing inside him.

The blonde boy nodded solemnly.

'Now for the final stage,' he said. 'Bring her up here.'

A red-haired girl was pushed forward by two bulky, leering boys. The party stopped in front of them. Her face was harsh and defiant as her captors held her in place.

He looked coldly at her. They never really knew him. They had no idea what it was like, didn't want to know, truth be told. They were well-intentioned, certainly, they had even been willing to stand up and fight. But had it been for him, or for their world, for their comfort, for their own lives? For most people that was enough, but not for him: he had had to offer himself for slaughter, to annihilate himself so they could go on living. He had no complaints to make about his fate: that was what he understood friendship to be. _I give myself up for you and you give yourself up for me_. _Anything less than that and we aren't really friends._ He was tired of being disappointed, tired of sharing in an empty glory. He wanted peace, something he had a better chance of finding in the sombre chill of his new house, among those who despised him.

'Turn her around,' he said. 'I don't want to see her face.' Her warders brusquely obliged.

'_Verbera_,' he said, pointing his wand at her. '_Septem_.'

The lash that formed itself was red and seemed to glisten in the air.

* * *

'Should we go there now, do you think?'

Hermione sat on the edge of the bed, looking pensively up at the window.

'If you like,' Caius replied in a rather halfhearted voice. He was slouched in the hotel room's sole armchair. 'But to do what exactly?'

She looked back from the window and glanced around the room. For a wizarding hotel, there certainly wasn't much that was magic about it.

'He seems to be remembering more and more,' she began. _Although is he remembering the right things?_ 'He knows he's a wizard at least.'

By the time they had escaped their attackers, he had been long gone, and they were in no fit state to go after him: Hermione could scarcely walk on her ankle, and Caius looked like he had a broken nose. He had come and found her in the alleyway, blood all over his face and overcoat. Instead they had been forced to disapparate back to the Hotel Pelletier and break out the healing charms.

'Yes, but will he be the same wizard as before?' Caius's face looked markedly more serious than it usually did.

'That's true... How could I have been so careless?!'

'Don't be so hard on yourself about the wand: it was an accident.'

He got up stiffly then came over and sat at the end of the bed. She shot him a half-smile.

'Today I watched Harry Potter unleash a horde of snakes on a street of innocent people.'

'Maybe it's not so bad,' said Caius. 'You did say he saved you from the Witchfinder's men, or whoever they were.'

She shook her head.

'That wasn't Harry. Not really. And he wasn't saving _me_, he was saving a stranger.'

She shut her eyes, the meanness of the room oppressing her. But darkness offered neither comfort nor oblivion; only memory.

'Everything is my fault,' she said suddenly, opening her eyes again.

Caius looked at her with concern.

'You're too hard on yourself.'

She shook her head.

'No, I don't think so. The night Harry disappeared, the night he was out duelling with you, he and Ginny were arguing because she was jealous of me. Ginny thinks he cast the memory charm on himself. After he tried to choke her.'

Caius slumped backwards where he was sitting.

'Do you think that's what really happened?'

'I don't know. It's possible.'

'That's a pretty extreme way to run away from guilt.'

'I know.'

_Or was it in fact a very harsh punishment?_.

She sat in silence until she could feel Caius looking at her.

'And was Ginny right to be jealous?' he asked calmly.

'No. At least, not in that way. There's never been any question of …' She stopped.

'Don't I have the right to say that Harry was and is my best friend?' she said, her voice louder and reverberating around the small room. 'And doesn't he have the right to say the same thing?'

'I think you know the answer already,' he replied evenly.

'So you think I should just walk away, be nothing to him?'

She looked at him: his expression was opaque.

'I shouldn't be advising you.'

She thought of Ilaria wrapped up in Harry's arms, looking adoringly at him. _She kisses him very convincingly. But why shouldn't she?_ They looked good together, she had to admit. Perhaps she really did make him happy. Her expression hardened.

'When he knows who he is again, and tells me to my face to walk away, then I'll walk away.'

He nodded.

'I understand.'

He got up off the bed, went to his bag and took out a plastic bottle filled with a dark liquid. He took the lid off the bottle and held it out to her.

'Drink this,' he said, 'you need to disconnect a little.'

She looked at him with a mixture of suspicion and curiosity. Then she took the bottle and drank. The liquid was hot, almost scorching, sweet but not excessively sweet. Almost immediately her body felt less taut. She handed the bottle back to Caius, sat down slowly on the bed and watched as he took a long swig. As she looked around the room, its decor suddenly seemed less dreary and oppressive. Caius resumed his spot at the end of the bed and handed her the bottle again.

'What is it?' she asked, though her question came out more as a statement.

'Dementico,' he replied in a thick voice. 'I've been teaching myself to brew it. I'm not that good at it, although this is the best batch so far.'

She lifted it to her head and examined the mysterious black liquid through the plastic bottle, which still bore the label of the fizzy drink it had once contained. She tilted the bottle to one side and watched the viscous liquid displace slowly.

'So this is Dementico,' she said. She could see Caius's face slightly distorted through the see-through plastic. 'I've heard of it but never seen it before.'

She drank again from the bottle and looked at him for a few moments.

'This is a bad idea,' she said as she handed him back the bottle. The drink seemed to produce a kind of heat in her head, a gooey liquid heat that almost straight away started melting whatever it came into contact with. A strangled sort of giggle escaped her lips.

'Feeling any better?' asked Caius.

'Yes,' she replied, half-suppressing another giggle. 'But how is this going to put us in a fit state to tackle Harry and Ilaria?'

He stood up suddenly, seemed to contemplate the air in front of him, then turned back to her.

'Even supposing we had a plan, which we don't,' he began, 'do you really feel up to it?'

She thought about it for a few moments.

'No. Not really.'

He took another swig from the bottle, then came back and sat down on the bed again. Rather than the drink relaxing him, he seemed fidgety and distracted. She resisted the temptation to ask him to pass her the bottle.

'By the way, I didn't get a chance to say thank you for this afternoon.'

'For what?' he asked.

'That snake. The one that was about to crawl up my leg.'

He smiled ruefully.

'Ah forget about it. Probably harmless.'

'Maybe, maybe not. I'm glad I didn't have to find out.'

'I wasn't intending to vaporise it, to tell the truth,' he remarked. 'I don't go in for cruelty to animals usually.'

'I appreciate the good intention,' she replied, this time managing a warmer smile.

'It wasn't exactly what you'd call care of magical creatures,' he continued.

'Were they magical creatures? I'm not sure. Anyway, the point is, thanks.'

'No problem,' he said. 'At least I did better than last time.'

'Last time?'

'When I allowed Mr Morley and friends to catch us.'

'You're not my bodyguard.'

He lowered his head and stooped his shoulders a bit.

'Bodyguard? No, not a ghost like me.'

This was a really weird way to put himself down.

'A ghost?'

He looked round at her, quizzically for a moment, before he realised he'd said something funny.

'I mean I'm a second-rate wizard.'

'I've never heard the word 'ghost' used to mean that,' she remarked. 'But I've noticed you use odd little words and phrases sometimes. I was meaning to ask you where they come from.'

He looked a little embarrassed.

'What other words?'

'_Dackle_, for example. I've heard you use it a couple of times.'

He smiled to himself.

'Ah, you're very observant,' he replied.

'I don't know about that.'

But she didn't like not knowing things.

'They're just phrases I grew up around,' he said, sitting himself cross legged further down the bed, ready to launch into an explanation. 'It's called the divine tongue. It's a kind of slang I suppose.'

'I've heard plenty of wizarding slang,' replied Hermione, 'but I've never heard of the divine tongue.'

His eyes glinted.

'Ah, it's not the sort of thing you hear at Hogwarts.'

'Why not?'

'Because it's carried by itinerants mostly.'

Itinerants she had heard of.

'You mean itinerant teachers of magic?'

'That's right.'

'Your family had itinerants?'

'On and off over the years. Though we haven't for a long time. We had one when I was a child, but he left, like they always do. After that my parents decided to send me to Hogwarts. But I learned plenty from him. Including how to speak the divine tongue.'

'Really?' she looked at him intently. 'Can you teach me some?'

He hesitated.

'What, is there some rule that doesn't allow you to tell people who haven't had an itinerant teacher?'

'No,' he replied. 'Not that I know of.'

'Well then. Teach me.'

'Ok.'

She leaned a bit closer.

'_Dackle_ means muggle, doesn't it?' she said.

'That's right. Or you can say _peaceful_.'

'Oh yes, I heard you use and Adam Harries say it in the pub. So that's what it means. What's the difference between the two?'

'_Peaceful_ is more neutral. _Dackle_ is …uh … not so polite.'

'I see.'

'So how do you say magic?'

'Magic? _Divine_.'

'And wizard?'

'We just call them _seers_.'

'Oh. What about witches?'

'There is no separate word for witch. You call them seers too.'

'Well, I suppose that's something,' she remarked, smiling to herself.

'So a dackle is peaceful, and a seer is what we call _restless_.'

'Why restless?'

He shrugged.

'That's just how it is. A _ghost_, like I told you, is a wizard who's not much good at magic, and what most magic folk call a squib we call a _squinter_. Like my old Uncle Glynn.'

'You're not a ghost, by the way.'

'Thanks.'

She repeated the words in her head.

'In the divine tongue, doing magic seems to be connected to vision,' she remarked.

'I suppose so,' he replied. 'In fact, there's another one: _white-eyed_.'

'White-eyed?'

'Yeah, it means someone who practices a different kind of magic from ours.'

The question of other kinds of magic was one that had intrigued her from time to time. The books she had read that dealt with it had always seemed rather dismissive of the idea. She had asked about it in class at Hogwarts once, and been told that, yes, there were other kinds of magic, but they were weaker, more manifestations of the mind's untapped potential than a real force.

'What other kinds of magic do you know?'

'I don't know names. But they exist, white-eyed people.'

She leaned towards him.

'Have you ever met one?'

'Not that I know of. Have you?'

'No, I don't think so,' she replied, smiling slightly.

'I figure if there's a word for them, they must refer to something wizards have come across,' he remarked.

'Maybe.'

They paused for a moment and Caius took another swig. He offered her the bottle and this time she took it.

'Oh, and a really kick-arse wizard is called a _drygue_,' he added. 'That would be someone like Dumbledore, or my grandfather, or Harry or you.'

'Oh, don't include me in that company,' Hermione replied. 'And certainly not these days. I've gone soft. My reflexes have all gone dull.'

'I wouldn't say so.'

He seemed embarrassed again. She was starting to find it a bit endearing.

'So what's the divine for 'cast a spell'?'

'Ah, it's a funny sort of a word. _Gockle_.'

'_Gockle_? Yes, that's pretty strange.'

'Yeah, and to _kiss_ means to curse.'

She raised an eyebrow.

'Really? Is kissing so dangerous then?'

He smiled.

'I don't know where the term comes from.'

His expression changed again.

'What we saw on that video tonight, you'd call it _lighting someone up_.'

Her expression darkened too.

'Torture them, you mean.'

'Specifically with magic.'

She looked away.

'Tell me something nicer.'

He paused.

'Ok. There's _sublime_.'

'What does that mean?'

'It means girlfriend. Or boyfriend.'

'Ok, that's nicer.'

'And to _sublime_ someone means to seduce them.'

Another pause.

She looked him in the eyes.

'And are you subliming me?'

She couldn't quite believe what she was saying.

'I don't know,' he replied, maintaining her gaze. 'It's not for me to say.'

The words passing between them seemed to vibrate in the air and then inside her.

'You are a little,' she murmured.

He reached out and touched her on the cheek, his eyes glazed over and distant. Then he slid his fingers under the line of her jaw and tugged her head slightly so that her mouth faced his. She didn't try to stop him. Then his mouth was against hers. She kissed him back, closing her eyes_._ But the dark was full of memory again. It jarred her out of the moment. _Why am I kissing him? Why would I kiss someone at all?_ Through the blur she could still see just how disorientated she was. _What am I doing? Just lazily passing the time, when Harry's..._.

She broke free of the kiss and shifted a bit further down the bed from him.

'Sorry,' said Caius in a numb-sounding voice. 'I don't think you want this.'

'Don't say sorry,' she replied. 'You've nothing to be sorry about. It's me. I'm getting so good at messing things up. I can't believe how useless I am. How on earth do I think I'm going to save…'

It was only once she was on her feet that she realised the state she was in. She swayed and put out her hand to the bed to steady herself.

'... Harry Potter,' said Caius quietly.

She looked over at him but he seemed to be receding from view, either disappearing into the distance or just fading into a blur. She lay down on her side, her gaze flitting over the uneven surface of the duvet until it hit the wall. She heard a rushing in her ears, like the sea or intermingling whispered voices. For a few moments more she gazed at the wall. Then she closed her eyes.

Darkness enveloped her, but it was a darkness smeared with a blur of lights, whites, yellows and reds, some blinking on and off, others fixed. As the lights gradually started to shift into focus and the darkness took form, the cold hit her, a cold, probing wind accompanied by the smell of the night air and an undertow of exhaust fumes. Then the detail painted itself into the scene and she found herself back in London, over the middle of the Thames, standing on Southwark Bridge. Lights and animation were visible on the South Bank, but the bridge was empty and silent. She looked around for Harry, but he wasn't there. She felt confused: wasn't she revisiting the night when she had stopped him from jumping off the bridge? She looked down the line of streetlamps that led to the shore: a solitary figure was walking towards her at an even pace. It was a woman, she could see, a woman with long dark hair blowing in the breeze whipping across the bridge, dressed in tight jeans and a black sweater. The sound of her heels was the only sound on the bridge, apart from the faint wailing of the wind.

'There's nothing for you here, Hermione,' came the voice as it carried down the bridge. _Ilaria_.

'Where is he?' Hermione said in reply, her voice clear and cold.

'He's safe,' said Ilaria. She stopped no more than a couple of paces in front of her, a smirk of quiet satisfaction on her face.

'Safe? He nearly jumped off the bridge. He needs treatment.'

'I'm treating him. I look after him now.'

'The only way he can be treated is by getting rid of the memory charm. Only you don't want to do that, of course.'

Ilaria's smirk twisted into a glare.

'It doesn't concern you. Go back to Caius. He'll do for you, if it's a little bit of action on the side that you're after.'

'Oh it does concern me. I'm the only one who wants to help Harry. You certainly don't.'

The girl's eyes flashed maliciously in the dark.

'Every minute that he's with me I'm helping him. I found him on the streets. I took him in, helped him regain his strength. I give him everything he needs.'

'I can imagine. I've seen you all over him.'

She was smiling again.

'You can't imagine anything. You've never had him in your bed. You don't know even 1% of what I give him, and what he gives me. He's exquisite. And I intend to keep him forever.'

'What, keep him in the dark forever about who he really is?'

'He wasn't happy with who he was. He's so much better off without Harry Potter.'

'Isn't it a bit pathetic, though? Here you are the girlfriend of the great Harry Potter, and he doesn't even know who he is.'

There was a flash of something else in Ilaria's eyes. She wondered if she had touched a nerve.

'Leave him alone,' she replied. 'You lost all right to him. You waited a year, a whole year, until you started looking for him. And you only started because someone else happened to bump into him. What a pathetic friend you are. What made you do it? Boredom? Your boyfriend not doing it for you?'

Hermione looked at the girl with silent contempt. But she didn't have a reply. The accusations were pretty much the same ones she made to herself.

'Or much more likely,' said Ilaria, all smirking and triumphant, 'when you heard he had a girlfriend you couldn't stop yourself. You always make sure you break up all his relationships. It's your speciality. Here you are, stringing along Caius, getting him to help you break up me and Harry. And let's not forget your boyfriend and his sister, stabbed in the back. Quite a performance, Hermione, I have to admit.'

Hermione smiled. It seemed like the best way to hide her true feelings.

'If that's the case, Ilaria,' she said coolly and taking a step forward. 'If I'm as much of a bitch as you say I am, if I'm as obsessed with Harry as you claim, then you really should be worrying. Because I won't rest until I make sure that he's free of you. The more I think about it, the more I wonder whether you engineered his memory loss in the first place. It seems too convenient that you just found him on the street and nursed him back to health and into your bed.'

Ilaria smiled.

'You've been watching too many soap operas, Hermione,' she replied.

'So you deny it, then?'

'I don't have to deny it. We both know that if anyone's to blame, it's you. Imagine the nerve: breaking into his flat to leave him a mawkish, anonymous note. It's borderline psychotic.'

She started to grope around for a response, but something stopped her.

'Wait a second,' she said, suddenly much more conscious, suddenly remembering drinking the Dementico in the hotel room and the state it had put her in. 'You know too much. You know things that Ilaria can't know. You know too much about me. Who are you really?'

The girl smiled, her face still seemingly Ilaria's.

'I wondered whether you would work it out. Your brain is still functioning quite well, even down here. To tell the truth, I hoped you would work it out. You're just as clever as I thought you were.'

'Who are you?' Hermione repeated.

In an instant the face of Ilaria was gone, replaced by that of a woman she had never seen before. She had dark hair, pale skin and strangely gleaming green eyes. She was older than Ilaria, but strangely ageless.

'Oh, I'm just a fan,' she replied. 'A big fan of your work.'

'What work?' said Hermione.

'The trail of misery you leave behind you,' the woman replied. 'Ron and Ginny of course, and now Caius. And you mean to detach Ilaria from Harry as well, so you fully intend to hurt her too.'

'As for Ilaria,' said Hermione. 'I rather think that she's made her own bed and will have to lie in it.'

'An appropriate image,' said the woman. 'Go get her, I say. I'm looking forward to seeing how things turn out. And of course, whether you manage to rescue poor Harry.'

'You speak as if you're watching me all the time,' said Hermione.

'Not all the time,' the woman replied. 'I have other people to keep tabs on as well.'

'What are you?' said Hermione for the third time. 'Some kind of demon?'

The woman smiled.

'No, nothing so dramatic as that. I'm flesh and blood.'

'Are you a witch then?'

'Not exactly. What did Caius call us? The white-eyed.'

'White-eyed? You mean you practise some other kind of magic?'

'Something like that.'

'And you can see inside my mind.'

'Yes,' said the woman. 'It's my favourite pastime. And at the moment you're my favourite subject. You're in the process of making a really delicious mess. I thought Harry was fun when I got to take a look inside him, but you're something else.'

'Well,' said Hermione. 'I'm so happy that Harry and I have been able to provide you with such entertainment. But haven't you made a mistake by revealing yourself?'

'I couldn't resist, to be honest,' said the woman. 'I've been so looking forward to us meeting. And anyway, I like to shake things up from time to time, make things more of a challenge. I could go on lurking in the shadows forever, but it's too easy and, to tell the truth, it gets a bit lonely.'

'So what do you propose?' asked Hermione tersely. The woman looked down for a moment. As Hermione followed her gaze she felt something in her hand. She looked down and saw the black-handled knife there.

'You kept it', the woman remarked. 'That's good. You may need it at some point.'

'You gave this to me, I suppose?' said Hermione.

'Yes,' she said with a giggle. 'That was funny, wasn't it?'

'Not particularly,' said Hermione, remembering her emaciated evil twin.

'Oh you'll get used to it,' said the woman. 'My sense of humour, I mean.'

'Do I have any choice in the matter?'

'Not unless you think of a way to get rid of me.'

'I'll be working on it, don't worry.'

The woman's eyes seemed to gleam even more brightly and strangely.

'I wouldn't expect anything less.'

Hermione scowled at her.

'There's one thing I want to know,' she said. 'Are you going to try and stop me from helping Harry?'

The woman smiled again. It was the same knowing smirk she had had Ilaria wear earlier.

'Stop you? Don't worry about that. For one thing, I love seeing where your choices take you. And since your choices always take you back to Harry, that's where you're bound to go. I don't think Ilaria, bless her, will really be up to the job of stopping you. You overestimate her.'

'What do you mean?'

'He wiped his own memory, right after he tried to choke his girlfriend. What did people call him? The Golden Boy? I can see why he couldn't bear it anymore. He had to find a way of ruining his life.'

'And I suppose you were whispering all this in his ear? After all, ruining lives appears to be your thing.'

'You don't understand me yet, Hermione. I don't _ruin lives_. I don't go around making happy people miserable or good people bad. All I do is help people to get what they really want. I'm not trying to make you unhappy, you already are unhappy. I don't make you do anything against your own will. I won't oppose you _as such_, but other people might not be able to stop themselves from getting in your way.'

'I suppose that's a threat.'

'It's not a threat, Hermione, it's a piece of advice.'

'You keep using my name, but I don't know yours.'

'Oh you will,' said the woman. 'When the moment's right.' She reached out her hands and placed them on Hermione's, her cold fingers gripping Hermione's fingers. She wanted to resist, but couldn't. The woman looked down at their interlocked hands then looked up slowly and smiled.

'We're going to have a lot of fun, you and I.'

Southwark Bridge dissolved into darkness. When the darkness next became clear Hermione was back in the hotel room, her head pressed against the slightly stale smelling duvet. Slowly she dragged herself up into an upright position. The hotel room was silent. And there was no sign of Caius.

* * *

When he woke up, his hands were around Ilaria's neck. They were scarcely pressing on the skin, but he withdrew them immediately, his heart suddenly pounding in fear. He reached under the covers and took hold of her wrist, feeling for her pulse. Her heart seemed to be beating normally. He lay her hand down gently and kissed her on the back of the neck. Then he quickly got out of the bed.

He stood in the middle of the bedroom floor in the dark, not sure what to do next. _Am I dangerous? What will happen if I go back to sleep?_ Fragments of his dream came back to him, but he tried to push them away. He wondered whether he should get dressed, pack his things and leave. But the mere idea made a feeling of dread well up inside him.

Suddenly Ilaria turned over in bed and turned on the bedside light.

'What are you doing?' she said sleepily, only half looking in his direction.

'I had a bad dream,' he said.

'You scared me,' she murmured, shifting round into an upright position on the bed. 'I thought for a moment someone had broken in.'

'Sorry,' he said.

'Oh my goodness!' she exclaimed as she noticed that his beard was gone. 'Why did you shave it off?'

'I don't know,' he replied. 'It just seemed like the right thing to do.'

'It doesn't matter,' she said. 'You're just as handsome without it.'

She reached out a bare arm.

'Why don't you come back to bed?'

He hesitated.

'I have to show you something first.'

She looked quizzically at him but said nothing.

'Wait there,' he said, walking quickly across the room to the drawer that contained his clothes and belongings. He opened the drawer, slid out the wand and came back towards the bed. Her eyes fell on the wand straight away and her mouth dropped open in shock. He came and sat on the edge of the bed.

'Ever seen one of these before?' he said, holding the wand for her to see.

She scrutinised the wand with dark eyes, not saying anything. When she reached out to take it he pulled it away from her.

'It belongs to me,' he said in a low voice.

She sat back and sighed deeply.

'I can see that it does.'

She got silently out of bed, crept across the bedroom floor and went to her bag. In a few moments she came back with a wand of her own.

'How is this possible?' he said, looking back and forward between her and her wand.

'Please don't be angry with me,' she said contritely. 'I knew as soon as I met you. But magic has already done so much damage to you. I thought that the last thing you needed was to have any contact with it.'

'What do you mean, you knew as soon as you met me?'

She swallowed then reached out and touched him arm. He raised his hand to brush it away, but when his hand touched hers he left it there. She smiled weakly.

'Magic leaves a trace, both when you cast a spell and when a spell is cast on you. That's what I felt when I met you.'

He thought over what she had said.

'And you say magic has damaged me …'

'It must have been a curse that wiped your memory. It damages the brain, and the damage can get worse as the brain rewires itself. That's why I've always tried to keep you protected. You don't know how worried I was when you took that job with Armin.'

'What, because the bookshop sells books of magic?'

'No, that shop has no connection to the real world of magic. But you're too near to real wizards there. It's a constant stress for me. I'm always having to cast veiling charms around you, particularly when you go to work.'

'You cast spells on me all the time?'

He was more excited than angry at the idea.

'Yes. I'm sorry. And now you shaved off your beard, you'll be easily recognised. I should have tried harder to convince you to go somewhere else. Even back to Italy. It's ironic: I finally get you out of London, only for your wand to find you here. Who gave it to you?'

'No one. There was a sort of fight and it fell out of someone's pocket.'

To his surprise she didn't question him further.

'There you go,' she said. 'Somehow it found you.'

She reached over and kissed him timidly on the cheek. When he made no effort to stop her, she kissed him twice more.

'Can I see yours?' he said.

She hesitated for a moment, then relented and handed him her wand.

He took it and placed it in his hand, next to his. He looked at the two wands, sitting side by side in the palm of his hand. Then he returned hers.

'I actually did some magic this afternoon,' he said, looking down at his wand again. 'But now I can't remember how to do anything. The knowledge is all floating round in my head, but I can't grab hold of it.'

She looked at him sombrely.

'Would you like me to help you?' she asked.

'Yes,' he said. 'But first, I want to see you do some magic.'

She nodded then stood up and positioned herself a little way from the bed. She looked round the room then back at him, closed her eyes and whispered the words _expecto patronum_. A white mist shot from the end of her wand then began to coalesce in the air in front of her. The swirling mist formed itself into a small bird, which flew up towards the ceiling then swooped down and landed on his shoulder. He looked round slowly at the white bird, which seemed to stare at him from where it had perched. Its presence didn't startle him. On the contrary, the spell seemed familiar to him.

'What kind of bird is it?' he asked, as if that was a relevant question.

She reflected for a moment.

'_Succiacapre_,' she said. 'In English it's called a nightjar, I think.'

The bird took off again, flew twice round the room, before dwindling to a tiny white dot and disappearing.

'It was beautiful,' he said.

'It is a beautiful charm,' she replied, walking up to him and putting her arms around his neck. 'To cast it you need to think of something beautiful that happened to you. I thought of the day I met you.'

She took the wand out of his hand and threw it down onto the bed. Then she kissed him hard on the mouth.


	18. The last of Harry Potter - Chapter 18

18\. The name of Harry Potter

They emerged from their building, their wands stowed in their pockets, and started to walk in the direction of the cemetery.

'I still don't even know my real name,' he said as they passed by the cemetery's ivy-covered walls.

'Can I still call you James for now?' Ilaria asked.

'I suppose so,' he replied. 'It does still seem like my name.'

They turned off the main road onto a narrow street that seemed to pass through the cemetery itself, bounded on either side by its tall stone walls. They stopped in front of a broad locked gate in the wall. The last tourists had gone and the gates were locked. Ilaria glanced around her, took out her wand and muttered an enchantment. The gate swung open and they went inside.

'What did you say to open the gate?' he asked.

'Alohomora.'

'I think I've heard it before.'

They made their way along a broad avenue, lined with stone vaults on either side. Countless signposts pointed the way to the graves of the famous. Off the main avenue were numerous narrower avenues, all lined with grave after grave, mausoleum after mausoleum. They turned to the left at random onto one of the side avenues, passing into a more secluded sector of the cemetery. They followed the narrow avenue until they came to a turning that passed between two tall stone mausoleums, in turn leading them into a small open space hemmed in on all sides by graves. He looked up. The night sky was clouded over and lit by the glare of the streetlights. He felt Ilaria touch him on the arm. He turned to her.

'Ready?' she asked gently.

'Ready,' he replied, taking out his wand.

'Now', she began, 'try emptying your mind. Then cast a spell. Maybe something will come to you spontaneously.'

'Ok,' he replied.

He shut his eyes and emptied his mind as best he could. He felt the cool night air on the back of his hand as he held his wand out. At first nothing happened. He persevered until he felt the cool enveloping darkness begin to crack. He refocused and waited. Finally an incantation leapt into his mouth:

'Expelliarmus!'

The charm flew from his wand and shot past Ilaria's ear, blasting the corner off a marble tombstone.

* * *

Caius strode along the dark street, swerving erratically around people walking in the other direction and muttering under his breath.

'_It's ridiculous! He chokes his girlfriend, erases his memory like a total coward and disappears into the night, and now he has two girls fighting over him, one trying to be the love of his life, and the other his best friend_!'

He walked up to the building on Rue Froidevaux and pressed hard on the buzzer. There was no reply. Suddenly he heard a familiar voice behind him.

'What are you doing in Paris?'

He looked round and saw Henoc Lutumba a little way down the street, walking towards him.

'I've come to see Harry Potter,' he replied calmly.

Within a few moments Henoc was at the front door, a nervous look on his face.

'You know what's going on then,' said Henoc. 'You know who James Black is.'

'Harry Black, Sirius Potter, whatever name he goes by,' Caius replied.

'Are you feeling alright?'

'No, not really. How long have you known, by the way?'

He accompanied his question with a withering stare at Henoc.

'A few months,' came the reply.

'Well thanks for letting me know, man.'

'I know, I know. I promised Ilaria I wouldn't say anything.'

'Now I see why she's been so low-key this past year. I thought she just couldn't be bothered to meet up anymore.'

'You're taking it badly,' said Henoc. 'Why don't you come inside? Or maybe go and get a drink. You need to chill out a bit.'

Caius shook his head vigorously.

'No, definitely not. This has to be sorted out now. Before Hermione gets to him first and tries to 'save' him again.'

'Hermione Granger? She's here?'

'Oh she's here all right, just down the street at the Pelletier! We came all the way to Paris together to find the Golden Boy himself!'

He turned swiftly and pressed down hard on the buzzer again.

'Hey, careful with that,' said Henoc, reaching for his arm. 'They're not there.'

'Why would I believe you?'

'Well, look at this then!' Henoc pulled a post-it note off the buzzer. _Gone for a walk in the cemetery_, he read. 'Satisfied now?'

'Well, I'm afraid I'm going to have to interrupt their romantic walk among the graves,' remarked Caius, already starting to walk away.

'Wait,' said Henoc, catching him firmly by the arm again. 'What exactly are you going to do?'

Caius reflected for a few moments.

'Don't know yet.'

'Do you want me to come with you?'

'No,' said Caius. 'This is between me and him.'

'Are you sure?'

'Yes, absolutely.'

Caius pulled free of Henoc's grip.

'Why are you helping Ilaria anyway?'

Henoc shrugged, a troubled look on his face.

'I don't know, she said it was part of his treatment. His mind was very fragile, so he needed a holiday.'

Caius shook his head emphatically.

'I've had enough of all that from Hermione. Harry Potter and his fragile mind. Boo fucking hoo!'

The next moment he disapparated, leaving Henoc on the threshold, looking down an empty street.

* * *

Hermione walked as quickly as she could down the Avenue du Maine, her hands thrust deep in her pockets. The evening was cool and autumnal. She turned onto the Rue Froidevaux, making for the building where Harry was staying. She took the note off the buzzer, read it, and carefully stuck it back where it had been. Then she turned and walked back down the street.

One minute later, the door of the building opened again and Henoc stepped outside. He took the note off the door and stuffed it in his pocket. Then he looked down the street towards the cemetery gates and set off in the same direction, shaking his head.

* * *

Caius followed a crisscross path through the cemetery, his wand lighting the way. He had resumed his muttering.

'…_and these people are supposed to be friends of mine… Well, I've had it with Ilaria, that's for certain, and probably Henoc as well. How long did he say he's known? A few months? What does he think he's... _?!'

Every few steps he stopped to listen, searching for the sound of charms and curses around the dull roar of traffic beyond the walls.

'… _and as for Hermione and her desperate quest to find Harry Potter, so wrapped up in him that she's ready to make excuses for anything he does! Domestic violence… morally bankrupt… really, what's the difference between her and Ilaria, and all the rest, heaven knows how many there are_ …'

A light flashed suddenly through the graves, some thirty feet away. Caius extinguished his wand and made for the place where the light had just been. Crouching behind a family vault, he squinted through the darkness. Harry and Ilaria stood a few feet away, their wands raised. Now and then the faint words of an incantation reached him, or little bursts of lights could be seen from the ends of their wands. When through the darkness he he saw them kiss, he stepped out from his hiding place.

A bright light burst upon them, seemingly from behind one of the tombs. They started and looked around them, dazzled by the sudden light.

'It's a really _magical_ night, don't you think?'

Caius was walking towards them, glowing wand in hand.

'Who are you?' said the wizard still going by the name of James Black.

'Ask Ilaria,' replied Caius, 'And who are you this evening, by the way?'

'Caius?' said Ilaria, her eyes staring.

'You know him?' said James, grabbing her by the arm. She gave a little nod.

'Oh we're old friends,' said Caius. 'Old school buddies.'

'Is that right?'

Caius's face gleamed white from the glow of his wand, which was trained on them.

'Look, it's nice to meet another wizard and everything,' James remarked, 'but do you mind not pointing that at us?'

Caius made no attempt to lower his wand.

'Sorry, I suppose I've interrupted your romantic little walk.'

'We were practising actually,' said James, raising his so that it was pointed back at Caius.

'Of course, you're probably a bit out of practice.'

'What do you know about it?'

Caius glanced at Ilaria and shot her an unpleasant smile

'Oh my… have I put my foot in it? Could it be that Ilaria didn't tell you that all three of us were at school together?'

'Caius, you had no right to follow us,' Ilaria began. 'When will you let this go?'

'Let what go?'

'This jealousy.'

Caius laughed.

'Jealousy? Who am I supposed to be jealous of? The two of you?'

Ilaria turned to James.

'I know this seems weird, following us all the way from London, but he's harmless, really. I think I should talk to him alone for a few minutes.'

'No thanks, Ilaria,' Caius replied. 'I'm afraid I'm not going to play along with your little game anymore.'

'Will one of you tell me what's going on here?' said James, his voice tense.

'Aren't you sick of all this amnesia business, Harry?' said Caius, coming closer to them. 'I certainly am. And I can't help thinking that Ilaria hasn't exactly done all she can to help you recover your identity.'

'Caius, don't be stupid,' said Ilaria. Then she turned to James.

'It's not like that. It's complicated.'

Without answering her, James turned back to Caius.

'You seem to know me better than I do myself,' he said finally. 'Who am I then?'

'Harry Potter,' came another voice from behind them. They turned and Hermione walked out of the darkness.

'You're wasting your time, Hermione,' shouted Caius as she walked calmly towards them. 'The softly-softly approach doesn't work. It's time for more extreme measures.'

'Will you be quiet!' replied Hermione, as she arrived alongside him. 'Harry's not Crabbe or Goyle, you can't make him see sense with your fists.'

She turned to face Harry.

'Harry,' she said, 'that _is_ your name. You lost your memory a year ago, probably deliberately, after you did something very stupid. You walked out on your friends and loved ones. And since then,' she said, casting a withering look at Ilaria, '_she_ has made sure you had no way of returning to your old life.'

'That's not true!' said Ilaria, 'I would never have stopped him once he regained his memory!'

Hermione looked at her with cold irony.

'Oh yes, and you've been trying so hard to help him regain it as well.'

Ilaria showed no sign of giving in.

'You don't know anything about how he's been. You weren't there to witness the headaches, the nightmares … the seizures.'

'Ilaria,' said Harry. 'Have you known all along who I really am?'

'Of course she has!' Hermione exclaimed. 'Do you really think you can capture someone's heart by false pretences and get away with it?'

'Ilaria,' Harry repeated, 'did you know all along?'

Ilaria hung her head.

'Yes, but I had to protect you.'

'Protect me from what?' he asked in a louder voice. 'Do you know what it is I did before I lost my memory?'

Ilaria didn't answer. She scanned his face, as if she were looking for some idea of what the best thing to say was.

'God, I'm sick of all this,' shouted Caius suddenly from behind her. 'What makes you so special that all these girls are desperate for you? You drop one, then Ilaria here picks you up and tries to keep you hidden from the world so she can keep you for herself, then this one,' pointing at Hermione with his wand outstretched, 'goes chasing across Europe after you. This is all just a pathetic little melodrama after all.'

'The only one being melodramatic is you,' said Hermione, turning on him. 'But it doesn't matter. You're not in your right mind. None of us are.'

'What does that mean?' said Caius.

'Someone has been whispering in our ears,' said Hermione, looking round keenly at all of them. 'Telling us what we want to hear, telling us we have good reasons to give in to our… our desires and neuroses.'

No one looked all that convinced.

'Where did you get that one from?' asked Caius.

'Well… after we drank that Dementico I had a sort of... encounter in a vision.'

Caius burst out laughing.

'I know how it sounds,' said Hermione. 'And I presume she's busy right now making sure no one believes me. But it's true.'

'Who is?' Caius sneered. 'The Lady in the Bottle?'

'Really, Hermione,' put in Ilaria, a smirk on her face, 'I never pictured you as the sort who would drink Dementico, let alone believe the hallucinations it gives you.'

'And as for you,' Hermione exclaimed, turning on her with eyes flashing, 'you devious, manipulating, doe-eyed slut, you actually have the nerve to try and take the moral high ground? How can you even stand here after what you've done to Harry? I'd have self-combusted out of shame by now!'

'Hey!' said Harry angrily. 'What gives you the right to talk to her like that?'

'Don't worry, James,' said Ilaria softly. 'Go easy on her. It's the jealousy talking.'

'His name is Harry!' Hermione exclaimed.

'Enough of all this!' shouted Caius, suddenly raising his wand and firing off sparks into the air. 'I don't care who's jealous of who, who's going to bed with who, I don't care if we've been cursed, I don't care if we're intoxicated, and I don't care if Harry's delicate mind is in danger of being deranged even more.'

'Good for you,' replied Harry, looking at him oddly. 'What is it you do care about?'

'I want a duel,' said Caius in a quieter voice. 'No more games. A real one. Slytherin versus Gryffindor, if you know what that means.'

He gave a quick swish of his wand and suddenly he was dressed in Slytherin colours.

'Caius, don't be ridiculous!' said Hermione.

'No, it's not ridiculous,' interrupted Harry suddenly raising his wand. 'If it's what you want, I'll be happy to oblige … Stupefy!'

The curse flashed in the dark, and Caius parried it with a counter curse. Then he disapparated, reappearing about ten feet away and fired off a curse of his own. Harry swerved to his left, and the curse exploded against the side of a mausoleum, blowing the arm off a marble angel. Caius stepped over a grave and fired off another curse, but Harry was too quick to respond, and his curse caught Caius in his wand arm just as he released. Caius recoiled in pain, dropping his wand. He reached down and picked it up, the grave he was standing on spattered with his blood. But Harry's next curse was already on him, carrying him several feet through the air and dropping him on the ground behind a row of tombstones. Harry strode forward, ready to fire off his next curse. Then a red flash shot out from behind the tombstones and Harry yelled in pain, clutching at his chest. He stumbled for a moment, then regained his footing, and shouted _Crucio_, his wand flashing through the air. A howl of pain split the air from behind the tombstones. Harry strode forward, passing between the tombstones in an instant. Caius was sprawled across a marble grave covered with flowers, motionless except for his wand hand, which still gripped his wand.

'Not much of a challenge, are you?' shouted Harry. 'Shall I put you out of your misery?'

Caius tried to raise his head.

'You know what, I couldn't care less,' he replied, and his head sank back to the ground.

Harry stood a few feet away from him, contemplating the scene, his wand outstretched. He closed his eyes, wondering whether the veil was about to fall to one side. An act of violence had propelled him into the darkness, perhaps a second act of violence would bring him back out of it. _This is who you are, after all_.

He opened his eyes and Hermione was standing in front of him, shielding the prostrate form of Caius, who lay behind her, still stretched out on the grave.

'You know who I am,' he said coldly.

'I do,' she replied, her eyes fixed on his.

'You know what I did. What made me like this.'

'Yes.'

'It was something terrible, wasn't it?'

'Yes, it was. But…'

'And I ran away from it.'

'Yes, but...'

'What was her name, the girl I hurt, the red-haired girl?'

'Ginny,' said Hermione. 'Her name's Ginny.'

'And my name's Harry Potter, is that it?'

'Yes, Harry, it is.'

'Then I suppose Harry Potter is a killer. I have the right to know.'

'Harry, you're not a killer!'

He shook his head.

'I don't believe you. I can see you want to protect me. I don't know why, but thanks anyway.'

Hermione looked at him despairingly. The cemetery was silent apart from Caius's ragged breathing.

'I want my mind back!' Harry shouted into the night. 'I want my own memories, even if they're bad memories! I have to feel what I did to that girl.'

She looked at Harry with an expression of total resignation. Then she walked slowly towards his outstretched wand until it was touching her chest.

'Harry, if this is your choice, you'd better make it count. Don't make this a random killing. Kill someone who loves you. Kill your best friend,' she said, a tear rolling down her cheek. 'You'd even be doing me a favour, because if Harry Potter is a killer then I don't want to live. I told you once, you can tell me anything. You can show me anything. If I have to see this, then it better be the last thing I see.'

His wand hand slackened, and the tip of his wand ceased to dig into her chest. She reached out her hands and put them to his temples, pulling his forehead against hers. They stood there in the calm of the graveyard, until at last he turned his head slightly and whispered in her ear.

'Hermione.'

This time her name spoke a lifetime of memories.

He held her as tightly as he could, almost lifting her off the ground. She seemed to weigh nothing. He looked into her pale, care-worn face. She seemed exhausted.

'You can't imagine how many times I read that note, trying to remember who sent it to me.'

'It was wrong of me to give it to you,' she replied in a whisper.

'It probably was, but where would I be now without it?'

He shuddered and looked away for a few moments.

'Hermione, I know what I've done. All of it.'

She nodded.

'I'm disgusted at myself.'

'So you should be. But it wasn't all you, Harry. I was serious when I said that someone's being playing with us from the shadows.'

'I'm sure you're right,' he replied. 'But that won't get me off the hook. Nobody put thoughts into my head that I hadn't already had myself.'

Suddenly footsteps approached the clearing. Harry and Hermione wheeled around. Henoc Lutumba was standing in front of them, a look of alarm on his face.

'The Witchfinders are here,' he said in a low but clear voice.

'They've followed us from Britain?' asked Hermione.

'Some of them sound like they're British,' Henoc replied 'But there are plenty of French ones too. It's an international operation. Even Bouquett, the head of the French League of Witchfinders is here.'

'If someone will help me up off this tombstone,' came Caius's voice from behind them, 'I'm ready to get stuck into these witchfinders too.'

'Oh, you're on our side again now, are you?' said Hermione, turning to him with a scowl. But she and Harry pulled him to his feet. In an instant his wand was out at the ready.

'By the way, good to have you back, Harry.'

'Err… thanks,' replied Harry.

'How many did you see?' asked Hermione, turning to Henoc.

'About twenty,' replied Henoc. 'Some with wands, some without.'

'We should all disapparate now,' said Hermione.

'I don't think we can. I think they've put some sort of magical cordon around the cemetery.'

To illustrate his point, he fired a charm into the night sky. About fifteen metres up, the curse rebounded off an invisible barrier and disintegrated in a little shower of sparks.

'Hermione, what is this about?' said Harry.

'No time to explain,' said Hermione, touching him on the arm. 'We'll probably have to fight our way out of here.'

Harry nodded grimly.

'They're here!' Ilaria called out.

Wizards strode out of the darkness from all sides, wands outstretched. Among the faces, Hermione recognised Charlie Skelton and Chloe Goodwin, standing either side of Mr Morley, and Fitzroger, alongside Mr Marchelow. She raised her wand, glancing at Harry, Henoc, Caius and Ilaria. Their wands were all raised in anticipation.

Mr Morley made straight for Hermione, a rather unpleasant smile on his face.

'Have you been seeing the sights of Paris too?' asked Hermione innocently.

He looked around with mild distaste

'Witches in a graveyard at night? A bit clichéd, don't you think? Even for my tastes.'

'But I thought you liked digging for bones,' Hermione replied.

Mr Morley scowled.

'It's an unpleasant necessity.'

'Whatever it is,' said Hermione. 'Would you mind calling off your tamed wizards?

'Actually I'm not the one in charge here,' replied Mr Morley. 'Not my jurisdiction. 'You'll have to take it up with my French counterparts.' Suddenly he grabbed Hermione by the arm. 'Which, I must say, may prove rather lucky for you.'

'Take your hands off her,' said Harry coolly, his wand raised. The next moment Mr Morley's hand snapped back, forcibly detached from Hermione's arm. He stumbled for a moment then regained his composure. Charlie Skelton stepped forward but Harry had his wand trained on him in an instant.

'I know you from Hogwarts, don't I?' he said tersely.

'From the Gryffindor common room itself,' came the reply.

'And now you work for witchfinders?'

'I don't expect you to understand my motives.'

'I'm not sure I'm interested in them right now.'

Mr Morley peered superciliously at Harry, a look of recognition dawning on his face.

'Well, well, I was so busy catching up with your friend here that I didn't notice you. I don't need to ask your name, of course, though you've certainly been keeping a low profile lately. What a night this is turning into: a sort of celebrity sabbat.'

Harry glanced at Hermione.

'This is the witchfinder, I suppose.'

'Yes,' said Hermione drily. 'The witchfinder and his wizard friends.'

Harry smiled grimly.

'Bit of a funny combination, isn't it?'

'Well, if you're a witchfinder, I suppose you've got to be a bit of an oddity to begin with,' remarked Hermione.

'That's what they all think,' said Chloe Goodwin.

'What do you mean, they?' said Caius. 'As if you're not a witch yourself.'

'We're wizards alright,' said Fitzroger, 'but we're the new wizarding nation: one that will live in broad daylight, not creeping about like the rats in the Ministry tunnels.'

Harry glanced at Hermione.

'Things seem to have got a bit weird while I was away.'

'And now the Golden Boy's back to save the day again!' came Skelton's mocking reply.

'I don't know about that, but I'll certainly give you a try,' Harry exclaimed, firing off a curse. Skelton parried it, and fired one back of his own, but Harry easily extinguished it.

'Enough!' said Mr Morley, raising his hand. 'Much as I despise the use of magic, those here who can wield it,' he continued, gesturing to the wizards surrounding them, 'are authorised to use it in a good cause if you don't behave yourselves and come quietly.'

He surveyed his prisoners.

'Not very subtle, are you? I thought wizards were supposed to be more secretive. You really have made our job much easier with your antics. Releasing snakes in the centre of Paris? Duelling in one of Paris's most famous cemeteries? Pretty much the typical British tourists abroad, aren't you?'

'Mr Morley! I'll take over now!'

A sober, middle-aged man with grey hair emerged from the darkness and approached them. Morley turned and nodded curtly to the man and stepped to one side.

'Mr Bouquett.'

Mr Bouquett looked at them soberly, shaking his head. He took out a rather battered black leather-bound book and leafed through its pages until he found the one he was looking for. Then he read from the page he had opened.

'In accordance with the third alinea of Article 154-3 of the Code of Witchfinders of the French Republic prohibiting the public display of magic, in conjunction with:

the second alinea of Article 176-1 prohibiting the use of magic with the intent to cause personal injury,

Article 223-4 prohibiting the use of magic to commit acts of vandalism of the national heritage of the French Republic,

Article 278-1 prohibiting cruelty to animals involving the use of magic,

and Article 315-2 prohibiting the possession of wands in public places, you are under arrest. You shall be taken from this place and placed in detention to await trial.'

'Is this for real?' Caius asked.

'I'm afraid so,' replied Henoc.

'I don't think so,' said Hermione, raising her voice. 'The French League of Witchfinders is a private organisation, like in most countries. Only the French Ministry of Magic has the power to arrest wizards.'

Mr Bouquett looked unimpressed.

'Debrandt!' he called out. '_Ramenez la Veuve_.'

'_La Veuve_!' gasped Henoc. '_Ca alors, les histoires sont vraies_.'

A few moments later a tall, bearded man wheeled a large lacquered wooden cabinet into view. He took out his wand and cast a charm that made the doors of the cabinet start to open.

'What is this?' said Harry.

'The wizards' repentance,' replied Henoc in a hushed, fearful voice.

The doors swung open, revealing a wooden statue about five foot tall, depicting an old woman dressed in black. The statue was realistically carved, down to the wrinkles on the woman's face and her solemn facial expression.

'This is bad,' said Henoc.

A yellowish glow seemed to envelop the statue and the old woman's eyes opened. The next moment an ear-splitting scream began to emanate from the statue. Within seconds, Harry, Hermione, Henoc, Caius and Ilaria were all stretched out unconscious on the ground.


	19. The last of Harry Potter - Chapter 19

19\. Théatre Optique

Harry put down the book and stretched in his seat, letting his head recline slightly on the back of the armchair. Bookshelves covered the entirety of the wall, from door to window. He smiled to himself. _This is Hermione's room after all_. He knew the books were arranged thematically: magical books to the left, nearer the door, and non-magical books to the right, towards the window. Within each of the two zones, the books broke down by category: history, art, novels, spells (there were even a few muggle books of pseudo-magic), political theory, philosophy, architecture, archaeology, religion and folklore. Hermione had seemed a little embarrassed by the precision in her bookshelves when she had first shown him her room; her awkwardness had been rather endearing. _We have time for these kinds of things these days_.

He thought about getting up and having another browse through the shelves, but he was really too comfortable where he was sitting. He glanced round at Hermione's bed, with its mauve bedspread, her dressing table, which seemed as neat and well-ordered as her books, the posters on the walls, the pale blue sky through the window. This was the room she had returned to each holiday from Hogwarts; from this room she had fled to come and find him the night he left Privet Drive. He hoped it had been a sanctuary for her through all the dark times. Now she was probably just about to leave it for one of the last times: surely she would move into the Burrow before long, at least once she had finished her final year.

It had been her idea: _come and help me pack up my stuff ready for Hogwarts_. It was a good idea; he needed things to do those days, otherwise the memories would creep up on him. He was always worried he would forget someone when he went through the list of all the people he'd lost, all the people who'd died. _Why am I here, and they're not_? Ginny had said it was fine for him to go and help Hermione. _It'll do you good_, she had said. _These past few days you've been letting it beat you_. _So little time has passed_, he had said in his defence. _I know, sweetheart, I know. Of course you would feel it so strongly. It's why you need something to do. So go and help Hermione pack_.

It was an unseasonably mild morning for early January, perfectly clear and no more than crisp outside. He reached for the cup of coffee Hermione had made for him on her parents' new machine and took a long mouthful. It really was good coffee.

He got up out of his chair and went with his coffee to the window. The back garden was broad and quite long, a paved terrace giving way to a neat lawn with flower beds on both sides, and a wooden pergola leading to a further, slightly scruffier grassy area at the rear. Only the bare trees in their garden and the neighbouring ones gave any indication it was winter. He could hear faint voices: Hermione and her mother had come out into the garden, apparently to take some clothes off the washing line. Hermione stood sideways on from where he was standing, her back turned to him. She tugged at her ponytail with one hand as her mother unpinned clothes from the line, her free hand gesturing casually in the air as she told her something. She had come outside wearing only a white top and jeans, and he wondered whether she wasn't cold, however mild a day it was. Her wrist was exposed where the sleeve of her top had slipped down a bit: the wrist was slender and pale, unadorned. He smiled and stepped away from the window before she had time to turn around and see him.

Having drunk the last of his coffee, he eased himself back down into the armchair. Even now, months on, he still had pain sometimes in his limbs and down his back, random headaches and weird red blotches on his skin. _It's psychosomatic_, everyone told him. They were probably right. But today, the pains had all dulled to a distant ache that was almost pleasant.

He glanced at the clock on Hermione's bedside table: time was running on, her bags were nearly packed, they would soon have to set off for Kings Cross. It would be difficult to be on the platform, surrounded by everyone boarding the train, knowing that he could have been going himself, knowing what had happened there. _You don't need to come with me onto the platform. We can say goodbye on the concourse, with all the regular people_. But if he wasn't going to help her get her bags onto the train, he might as well not have bothered. He wiped the dust off his glasses, turning his head to the wall above her bed. His eyes alighted on a small raffia box on the dressing table: the curve of a silver bracelet was visible just over the top of the box's rim. He sat up straighter in the chair, running his hand through his hair as the idea he had just had started to take shape. _Am I capable of it? I can learn. Should I though? Yes, definitely_. _She's worth it_. He started to glance around the room again, on the lookout for pen and paper so he could start sketching ideas.

A noise at the window made him fold the paper and slip it quickly into his pocket. He looked up and saw an owl at the window. _Pigwidgeon_. He scrambled out of his seat, went to the window and opened it. The owl raised its claw and he unhooked the message, which he read at once. The writing was Ginny's:

_I miss you_.

Hermione's bedroom disappeared, replaced by the bare stone walls of a cell. Harry looked around, totally disoriented at first. The memories of the evening quickly came back to him: the confrontation in the cemetery, what Hermione had been ready to do, the witchfinders, the screaming woman. _I'm a prisoner. We all must be_. A strange, mid-pitched whirring, seemingly coming from the corner of the room, caught his attention. A small round device kind of like a drum was rotating in the corner, a dull light emanating from it. He remembered what the cell had looked like only a few moments earlier, and recalled the exact memory the device had been conjuring. It had been just as he remembered it, apart from one detail: the message from Ginny. That never happened: what really happened was that Hermione had come up to get the last of her things, then they had gone downstairs together. He looked down again at the whirring, rotating device, now seemingly ineffectual. It occurred to him that someone had tampered with the scene in order to wake him from it. Whether that person wished him well or ill was beside the point: he had to try and rescue the others. Reaching into his pocket, he found that he still had his wand. He went to the cell door and pushed it. It wasn't quite a surprise that it opened.

He stepped out into a poorly lit tunnel with earthen walls. _Lumos_. But the light that shone out from the end of his wand, instead of being bright white, was a diffuse, grey colour. He squinted as he advanced along the tunnel, putting his hand out the earth wall to guide himself in the monochrome light. After a few moments his eyes grew more accustomed to the bad light, and he began to move more freely. The tunnel turned a sharp bend and widened, and the light from his wand grew even duller. At the same time a sensation of melancholy and despair began to creep over him. He stopped and looked around him in the grey light. _I'm walking in a mass grave_. Yellowed bones and skulls seemed to protrude from the tunnel walls, and there was a taste in the air of churned-up mud and latrines. Covering his mouth, he pushed on down the tunnel, stopping at the first door he came to. He held out his wand and whispered _Alohomora_. The door rattled a little, as if caught in a draught of air, but didn't open. He frowned at the door, then on a hunch tried to push it open. With a little effort the door swung open. _Maybe they don't need to lock the doors. Maybe no one even tries to leave_.

The room he stepped into was nothing like a cell. He found himself standing in a long, high-ceilinged room, lined on both sides with cabinets and display cases. He set off cautiously, glancing into the display cases nearest to him. Arranged on shelves were all manner of what he took to be magical objects. Here were wands of shapes and designs he had never seen in Ollivander's, glass orbs, intricate pieces of machinery, even skulls, animal masks and shrunken heads. At one point he recognised a Cardinalius. He crossed to the other side of the room: here the cabinets contained displays of newspaper clippings and photographs, describing hauntings and other unexplained phenomena. _This is a museum_. Further on he found records of witch trials, some handwritten on ancient manuscripts. At the far end of the room, sitting at a desk with his back turned, was Henoc.

'Can you hear me?' said Harry, in a voice louder than he intended.

Henoc put down whatever he was looking at and turned around.

'Harry?' he said with surprise. 'When did you get here?'

'Just now,' Harry replied, noting Henoc's relaxed air.

'Feel free to take out anything you like,' said Henoc. 'Just let me give you a pair of gloves first.'

'Thanks, it's ok,' said Harry. 'Actually I just wanted to talk to you.'

'What about?'

'Well, about this place. Do you realise you're in a cell?'

Henoc looked at Harry with bemusement.

'A cell?'

Harry looked around the part of the room where Henoc was sitting. Down in the far corner, wedged behind the final display cabinet, was the little whirring drum he had seen in his cell.

'Actually, there's something really interesting over here,' said Harry, reaching round the side of the cabinet and giving the object a brief, but firm kick that propelled it against the wall. The drum broke in two, and the museum room was replaced by the bare stone walls of a cell.

Harry turned to Henoc. He was sitting on a bunk, looking rather confused.

'Sorry about that,' said Harry. 'I thought you ought to see where you really are.'

'Thanks,' Henoc replied. His expression darkened suddenly. That terrible sound in the cemetery… oh no, _la veuve_!'

'Yeah, that statue of the old woman. It knocked us out and they brought us here to this prison.'

Henoc stood up and looked around.

'This must be the Pavillon de Vaux.'

'Is that a French wizards' prison?'

'No, France uses Azkaban for the most part. This is something more secret, and nothing to do with the French Ministry of Magic. I'd only heard rumours of this place, rumours that the witchfinders have their own prison. Turns out the rumours were true, just like with the _veuve_.'

'So you think that's where we are?'

Henoc nodded.

'From what I've heard, the Pavillon de Vaux is an old hunting lodge on the site of a World War One battlefield. The cells for wizards are underground, dug into the soil where the soldiers fell, because wizards' powers are weakened by all the dead soldiers lying all around them in mass graves.'

'That explains a few things,' said Harry grimly, looking around him. 'Do you have your wand, by the way?'

Henoc reached into his pocket and nodded.

'I guess they didn't think it was worth taking them off us,' said Harry. Henoc looked around the walls of his cell, a melancholic look on his face, as if he was searching for the room he had left behind.

'Yes, like we would never want to leave the… illusion made by that machine,' Henoc replied.

They looked at each other in silence.

'Wasn't it weird, sitting in that bar talking to me, knowing who I was when I didn't?'

A look of embarrassment crossed Henoc's face.

'Yes, it was weird. And I felt bad about it. But Ilaria said your mind was very fragile, so I didn't want to do any damage myself. I'm sorry.'

'It's ok,' said Harry, 'Let's find the others and get out of here.'

Henoc nodded. They exited Henoc's cell and continued down the tunnel, stopping at intervals to listen for the reverberations of footsteps or voices in the tunnels. There was no sound.

Soon they came to another metal door in the wall. A faint groan came from behind the door. Harry looked through the grate and into the cell. Inside he saw a balcony bathed in sunlight, overlooking a maze of red-tiled rooftops and in the distance a sunlit sea. Nodding at Henoc, he pushed the door open. Inside a man sat on a chaise-longue, looking out at the view. Hearing Harry's footsteps, he turned and began to address him angrily in a torrent of French. They walked into the room, and Harry headed straight for the corner, where he kicked over the same magical device. The rooftop scene disappeared, replaced by a small stone cell. The man's demeanour changed instantly and he looked around at his surroundings, a look of understanding dawning on his face. He began to address Harry in French. Harry shook his head and pointed at Henoc, who took over the explanations. The man was short, about five foot five, and had a straggly beard and thinning hair. He was wearing a grey tunic with a green cummerbund and had a distant look in his eyes. He certainly seemed like a wizard, another inmate of the prison.

'Tell him he's free to go,' he said to Henoc.

'I already did,' Henoc replied.

The little wizard looked at them for a few moments then suddenly embraced Harry before running out of the cell. Henoc kneeled down to examine the smashed magical device.

'It's called _théatre optique_, this device,' he said.

'For someone who calls himself a witchfinder, this Mr Bouquett makes rather a lot of use of magic,' Harry remarked.

'How else would he keep wizards under control?' Henoc replied. 'Just imagine, we were under its spell without even knowing. How did you break free of it?'

'I'm not sure,' said Harry. 'I think I had some outside help.'

Henoc picked up a couple of the smaller parts and put them in his pocket.

'I want one,' he said.

They left the empty cell and went on.

Twice more they came across cells occupied by wizards unknown to them. On each occasion they smashed the _théatre optique_ pacifying the prisoners and let them go. Finally, they came to a section of the tunnel with doors on either side.

'Maybe this time?' said Henoc. Harry nodded and pushed on the door to his left. Inside was a cavernous dungeon, its subterranean character well suited to its location in the prison.

'It's the Slytherin common room,' murmured Henoc.

Harry recognised it even he saw that its walls were decorated in Slytherin colours. The dungeon was empty and silent, apart from the inevitable whirring sound.

'Do you mind if I go in alone?' said Harry. Whether Ilaria or Caius was inside, he wanted to speak to them in private.

Caius was lying on a divan pushed up against the wall on one side of the dungeon, seemingly asleep. Harry leaned over him and peered down at him. He looked pale and had an ugly scar on his cheek. _I did that to him_. Harry shook Caius by the shoulder and his eyes flashed open.

'You're not supposed to be in here,' he said firmly.

'Wait there,' Harry replied, and he hurried off to look for the device creating Caius's illusion. A few moments later the sound of machinery being smashed could be heard from the far corner and Slytherin common room vanished from sight. Caius was sitting up when Harry returned, looking much more alert.

'Sorry to tear you away from your school years,' said Harry. 'Didn't realise Slytherin common room held such happy memories.'

Caius looked brightly at him.

'That was how I liked it the best,' he said. 'Empty.'

Harry grinned.

'Yeah, I can see the appeal.'

He sat down on the bunk next to Caius.

'Sorry for almost killing you.'

'Ah forget it. You were right: I did deserve to be put out of my misery. I was being a raging idiot. A super idiot in fact. I owe you an apology too.'

'No you don't.'

'Ah, but I do. Not just for this evening, if this is even the same day.'

'Good point,' said Harry. 'Who knows how long we've been in here?'

'First things first, Harry. I've got to get this off my chest. I'll have to tell Hermione too, if she ever speaks to me again. If I were her I wouldn't, that's for sure.'

'She'll be alright,' said Harry.

'Maybe. Thing is,' Caius continued, 'that night with the drinking game... I was partly responsible for setting you on your way to your subsequent misadventures.'

'No, you had nothing to do with it. I chose to take part, I chose all the rest too.'

'Not all of it. The drinking game was a bit more premeditated than you know. I arranged it with Ilaria beforehand.'

'What do you mean?'

'Ilaria brewed the Dementico. She thought it would be interesting to see what effect it had on you. I didn't realise her ulterior motive, mainly because I'm stupid and unobservant. I saw it as just a bit of childish fun.'

Harry was silent.

'You're entitled to be angry. You lost a year of your life, and it's partly down to me,' said Caius.

'It's not you I'm angry with,' said Harry. 'I'm not even angry with Ilaria.'

They both lapsed into silence.

'One question,' Caius began. 'Where are we?'

'A prison for witchfinders.'

'Oh. I thought Hermione had a point when she said the witchfinders had no power to arrest us.'

'I'm sure she did,' Harry replied.

'Did you find her?'

Harry shook his head.

'No, not yet. I haven't found Ilaria yet either. Henoc's outside though.'

Caius jumped to his feet.

'So we're fighting our way out, yeah?'

'Almost certainly,' Harry replied. 'Sure you're up to it?'

'Ah come on, you didn't do me that much damage.'

Harry followed Caius as he limped across the room

'One down, two to go,' said Harry to Henoc once they were out of Caius's cell.

'I think Ilaria's in there,' said Henoc, pointing to the opposite door. 'I think I heard her crying.'

'Don't be too hard on her,' said Caius.

Harry looked at them both with what he felt was a slightly awkward expression. Then he nodded.

'Keep watch. I'll be back soon.'

The din of a noisy classroom hit him as he crossed the threshold. It looked like an ordinary school, not so different from the primary school he once went to, but obviously not in Britain. A young schoolteacher was trying to keep order in a classroom of what looked like 11-year olds. The children's voices mingled with that of the teacher, all of them speaking in Italian. _Where is she?_ Ilaria sat disconsolately on her own at a desk in the corner. Her eyes were red from crying, and she was so intent on following the class that she seemed not to notice him. He continued to look at her from the doorway, following the gestures and facial expressions that were so familiar to him. Glancing to the opposite corner to where Ilaria was sitting, he could see the theatre optique at work as usual. He crept across the far side of the classroom and threw the device against the wall, shattering it. Ilaria looked around in shock. When she saw Harry, the look of shock on her face only seemed to increase.

'I've come to get you out of here,' said Harry. 'But first I think we need to talk.'

She nodded. He sat down next to her on the bunk that had replaced the classroom desk.

'I don't know where to begin,' she said, 'What I've done is unforgivable.'

'I just want to hear your side of the story,' he replied, his voice calm but firm.

She reached out her hand and touched his arm.

'Harry, despite what it looks like, my feelings for you have always been genuine.'

'I know,' he said gently.

'I just wanted to keep you for myself. I know it was wrong'

'I understand.'

She paused for a moment. He wondered what he would have done if she had told him the truth at some point.

'Ilaria, if it wasn't for you who knows what would have happened to me,' he began. 'I'm not here to have a go at you, I've got enough on my conscience. I just want to understand what happened this past year.'

'Ok.'

'First of all, Caius said that the drinking game was actually your idea?'

She looked disconsolate.

'Yes, I suggested it to him.'

'Why?'

'Harry, you know why.'

'That doesn't justify …'

'I know. All I wanted to do was to have a glimpse of what your true feelings were. I could see that you were unhappy and I wanted to know … had to know … whether it was because you were unhappy with Ginny Weasley, whether I had a chance. And that enchanted alcohol grants the person who brewed it access to the thoughts of those who drink it.'

'It also causes hallucinations,' he remarked.

'It can do. I'm sorry.'

'So the voice I heard in my ear, that was you?'

'No, no. I didn't hear any other voice.'

'I heard a woman ask my name.'

'It wasn't me. But I've heard that some people, when they drink Dementico, hear a woman's voice speaking inside their head. Some call her the Lady of the Bottle.'

'Oh yes, Caius said something about that in the cemetery.'

'Whether she's part of a hallucination or something else I don't know.'

'And what did you see after that?'

'I saw what you saw, or some of it. The images were fuzzy, as if I was seeing them through a kind of veil. I saw that you were suffering, that you felt lost and isolated. I saw the island.'

'You saw the island?'

She nodded.

'And the dark woman, was that you?'

'No, I was just an onlooker. The dark woman and the injured girl, they must have been your creations, like the island itself.'

'And then what happened?'

'The next thing I heard was that you had disappeared. The rumour was that you had beaten up Ginny Weasley and walked out into the night.'

He shook his head. For a moment he thought he could see the look of disgust on Ginny's face just before she had disapparated from the flat. He imagined her apparating suddenly in her parents' house in the middle of the night, the tense postmortem around the kitchen table in the Burrow, Ron's anger, Hermione's disappointment at his dim-witted and pathetic act of violence. Finally he looked up at Ilaria, his expression grim.

'If you knew me to be so violent, why did you come looking for me?'

'I told myself that for one thing, you weren't yourself that night. That was partly my fault anyway. But I also told myself you must have been provoked. And all of a sudden unattached. I just wanted to see you again.'

'And how did you find me?'

'By chance. One night, a few weeks later, I went to the cinema in the West End with some friends. When I came out of the cinema, I saw you on the other side of the street. You had obviously been sleeping rough. I was shocked that you didn't recognise me. That's when I saw that something was very wrong. I thought maybe your girlfriend had cursed you.'

Harry frowned.

'No, I cursed myself. Even now, I can barely remember those first weeks. What was I thinking of, casting that memory charm on myself? One of the first things I can remember is how you came up to me on the street. You offered to buy me dinner. I couldn't believe my luck, such a nice girl speaking to me, wanting to help me. In spite of everything, I really am grateful to you, Ilaria.'

She smiled at him, her eyes filled with tears.

'I tried dropping a few hints, to see if you would remember something of your past life, but you really seemed to remember nothing. As time went on, it seemed actually impossible that you would remember anything, and by that time I was in love with you. I told myself that even if you never remembered who you were, I would still rather be with you.'

Harry said nothing. _What a nice version of events_.

'This will sound strange,' said Ilaria, 'terrible even, but I think I'm going to mourn for James. He lived with me for a year and now he's never coming back.'

'No he isn't,' said Harry.

'I know,' she said sadly.

'We should be going,' he added.

She nodded, a tear rolling down her cheek. He reached out and stroked her arm. She seized his hand, held it against her cheek for a moment then kissed it once.

'I'm so, so sorry, Harry'.

She gave him another searching look of contrition. He managed a half-smile in reply.

'I'm a terrible person,' she added with a trembling voice.

'No you're not.'


	20. The last of Harry Potter - Chapter 20

20\. Forward thinking

As he passed deeper into the catacombs Harry quickened his pace. He was more and more conscious of the passing of time, particularly as he had no notion of what time of day it was, or even what day it was. He had sent Henoc, Caius and Ilaria to look for the way out, with a vague plan to meet at the first place outside that offered any kind of shelter.

After heading steadily downwards for about a hundred metres, the tunnel suddenly turned upwards.

Hearing footsteps ahead, he stopped dead and pressed his back to the wall. The footsteps seemed to approach from round a bend in the tunnel, then stopped. He listened, thinking he could make out a man's breathing. He inched forward down the tunnel until he reached the point where it bent round to the right, then leaned around the corner. Through the gloom he could make out the figure of the witchfinder. He was standing before a door, apparently looking in at a prisoner within. Through the dim light Harry could see his face in profile. The witchfinder was smiling, his eyes moving rapidly in their sockets, presumably sizing up the prisoner. _It must be Hermione in there_. He had seen how he looked at her. He drew out his wand and stepped into sight.

'Get away from her now,' he said coolly.

The witchfinder looked away from the grate and contemplated Harry with insouciance.

'Why don't you curse me with my back turned, like the coward you undoubtedly are,' he sneered. Then he returned his gaze to the door.

Harry raised his wand but remembered that its power was greatly lessened there.

'Enjoying yourself, are you?' he exclaimed.

The witchfinder looked around again. Noting that Harry had lowered his wand, he turned from the door and came towards him in the tunnel.

'Not particularly,' came the reply. 'I don't approve of the conditions in this prison. The cells are too comfortable. And by the looks of it, the security is rather lax. I'm afraid standards on the continent aren't what they are back home.'

Harry looked at him in silence.

'How did you get out of your cell, by the way?' the witchfinder continued. 'But I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, as you are the most illustrious wizard in Britain. Mr Bouquett has, I fear, underestimated you.'

'I'm not underestimating you,' Harry replied. 'You seem like a really nasty piece of work.'

The witchfinder smiled.

'That's as may be,' he replied, 'but it won't do you much good. You've realised that you'll have to do without magic down here, I take it.'

'Magic or no magic,' Harry replied. 'You're going to get out of my way.'

'How touching,' said the witchfinder. 'You've actually come to rescue your little friend. You look after your own, I'll give you that.'

'What is your problem?' Harry exclaimed. 'With wizards, I mean. I'm genuinely curious.'

'You're my problem,' he replied. 'You're the one who defeated Voldemort.'

'Voldemort?' said Harry. 'How can you be sorry that Voldemort didn't win? Have you any idea what he would have done to the likes of you?'

'Oh, he was a monster, certainly. But his victory would have made the concealment of the wizarding world impossible. And we would have come down very hard on Voldemort. As it is, your kind have managed to remain hidden, with the complicity of some in our world, and exposing you and those who protect you is as difficult as ever.'

'That's what you think?' Harry exclaimed. 'Do you know how many innocent people would have died if he had?'

'It's in the nature of war that innocent people die. Of course humanity would have had to stand up to Voldemort and his followers. It would have been a moral imperative. A great war. And then the whole world would have seen that for millennia, it had been harbouring a secret cabal of witches. Witches who have the ear of the world's leaders. Witches who have managed to sell the world the story that they never existed.'

'So Voldemort is your poster child for wizards? You refuse to believe that most wizards use magic for good and seek to protect Muggles? You obviously don't know as much about wizards as you claim to.'

'I know more than you know,' replied the Witchfinder.

With a sudden movement of his hand he knocked Harry's wand out of his hand and pushed him against the wall. His grip was stronger than Harry expected.

'It's rather inconvenient that you've reappeared. With the likes of you and your friend Miss Granger around, you might actually stand a chance of convincing the world that you're not a threat to it.'

'That's right, it's much more convenient to pretend that all wizards are like Voldemort,' Harry replied, choking from where the witchfinder was pressing down on his chest.

'As I said,' said Mr Morley, squeezing harder and making Harry start to cough, 'I have my doubts as to whether the French League of Witchfinders is really up to the job of incarcerating the likes of you and Miss Granger. I can't help thinking that we would do better. I think perhaps the two of you should be extradited back to my jurisdiction.'

Harry looked down at his wand. He tried a silent summoning spell, but the wand only shifted a little in the dirt. He envisaged for a moment what would happen to Hermione if he failed to defeat the Witchfinder. _Ok, I have to do this the non-magic way_. He started to chuckle.

'Do you think I don't mean it?' said the Witchfinder, a trace of irritation in his voice. 'We have ways of making sure you can't avail yourself of magic, even on the surface. You're nothing without magic.'

'No,' Harry replied. 'It's not that. I was just imagining what Voldemort would have done to you if he had ever got hold of you. Your big showdown would have lasted about ten seconds. And in about two seconds he would have turned you against the very people you claim to protect. You completely underestimate the cunning of wizards.'

'Is that right?' said the Witchfinder, his grip tightening even harder.

'Yeah. And you're doing it again,' said Harry. With a swift gesture he brought his knee crashing against the Witchfinder's groin. The Witchfinder fell to the ground, doubled over in pain.

Harry stepped over him.

'You think wizards are helpless without magic. A good wizard always knows when less magic is more.'

Then he kicked him again in the chest. He was about to kick him again when he heard the sound of a gun being cocked. He looked up and standing before him in the tunnel was Mr Bouquett, the Head of French witchfinders. Standing beside him was a tall, athletic-looking man in a smart suit. The man had a revolver trained on Harry's chest.

'That's enough, Mr Potter,' said Mr Bouquett calmly.

Harry stood up slowly. He was mesmerised by the barrel of the gun that was pointed at him. It occurred to him that his life had been in danger so many times, but this was the first time someone was actually aiming a gun at him.

'I must ask that you do no more damage to Mr Morley.'

Harry looked away from the gun at Mr Bouquett. He was slightly built, about sixty, with grey hair and round spectacles like those Harry himself used to wear. He wore a sombre grey suit and looked every bit the civil servant.

Mr Bouquett turned to the man with the revolver and addressed him in a commanding tone.

'Grosjean, prends-le.'

Grosjean followed his gaze and then looked at him quizzically.

'Lequel?'

Mr Bouquett looked at him with a stern look.

'Le chasseur de sorciers.'

'Et le sorcier?'

'Je m'en occupe moi-meme.'

The man hesitated and looked at Mr Bouquett in surprise. Mr Bouquett shot him a look that convinced him that he was serious. Shrugging slightly, Grosjean put the revolver in his pocket, knelt down and handcuffed Mr Morley, who was groaning on the floor. Mr Bouquett nodded to him brusquely, and Grosjean dragged the Witchfinder down the passage. Mr Bouquett turned back to Harry.

'Thank you, Mr Potter,' he said.

Harry stared at him in surprise.

'What for?' he said.

'You have prevented Mr Morley from kidnapping one of our prisoners. He has exceeded his jurisdiction by coming in here to kidnap the young witch in this cell. I shall be filing a report straight away, although I will have to think of a way to explain why you were not in your cell. Mr Morley has put our operations in danger.'

Unsure of what was to follow, Harry continued to stare at him.

'You are surprised,' said Mr Bouquett, with a hint of a smile on his face.

Harry nodded. He noticed that Mr Bouquett's English was much less accented than it had been in the cemetery.

'You are wondering what will happen next?'

Harry nodded again.

'Well, you and your friends will escape, along with the rest of the wizards you have already released. The Pavillon de Vaux will be closed and sold off. Perhaps someone will turn it into a nice _pension_, once these catacombs have been sealed and hidden, away from the eyes of the French police and the French Ministry of Magic. A new prison will be built somewhere else, though I can't guarantee I will be in charge of it. After this scandal I may be demoted.'

'I don't understand,' said Harry. 'You're letting us go?'

'Yes,' he replied with a kind of resigned disdain. 'I trust you to keep secret what you have seen down here.'

'Why would you trust me?'

'By personal recommendation of Albus Dumbledore.'

Harry looked at him in amazement.

'Of course you are surprised. Let me explain. It is a very difficult business, keeping the wizarding world secret, especially when some wizards, out of their contempt for … what do you call them in England … the Muggles, are careless about concealing it.'

'That's true,' Harry replied. 'But why would _you_ want to keep it secret? Surely you want to expose it?'

'Exposing it would not be very productive. Our mission is to keep control of the wizarding world, to prevent it from interfering in our world. And we can better control you if you remain secret. But now, your world and our world are moving closer together, and this has problematic effects. Some young wizards become more like us and begin to lose interest in magic. At the same time there are more people who suspect that witchcraft truly exists. And they fear it.'

'I would have thought that you find both those things quite natural,' Harry replied.

'Yes and no. It is the natural course that things should take. But the situation risks getting out of control. More witchfinders are needed, but more of the right kind. Even Albus Dumbledore foresaw the need for us. And he had the sense to seek allies among witchfinders like me, before the return of Voldemort became his main concern. He suggested that your Ministry of Magic set up a department to work with us. I don't know whether his advice was followed. I have never heard from your Ministry.'

'The Ministry has someone investigating what it calls para-magical activities,' Harry replied. 'That has something to do with witchfinders. It's very small though.'

'That was not what Dumbledore had in mind,' Mr Bouquett scoffed. 'Take it from a professional witchfinder,' he continued, 'you need to be careful with amateurs like Mr Morley. Their amateurism is dangerous.'

'I think we will from now on,' Harry replied.

'I come from a long line of Witchfinders,' Mr Bouquett continued, the pride palpable in his voice. 'I make no apologies for it, as in the wider world, there are as many bad wizards and witches as good ones. It is an ancient and noble profession, one that involves considerable study.'

Harry smiled.

'Don't tell me, there's a school for witchfinders.'

Mr Bouquett frowned.

'I myself oppose the use of magic,' he continued, apparently ignoring Harry's remark. 'But out of necessity I acknowledge as our allies those wizards who use it for good. Anyone who has made a proper study of the problem would understand that. Mr Morley and his associates have not. To them the problem is all so simple. Expose wizards and let them find their natural place in society.'

'What's that I wonder,' said Harry. 'Being burned at the stake?'

Mr Bouquett looked at him inscrutably.

'Unlike Mr Morley, I have respect for wizards like Albus Dumbledore. And for you, Mr Potter. I know what you did, not just for Britain, but for all of us. Dumbledore and I never agreed on the merits of magic: I would always argue, a little like Mr Morley in fact, that magic is a violation of the natural order, that those people who have that gift should choose not to use it, whereas he would argue that magic when used justly, upholds and protects the natural order. But unlike Mr Morley, I regard wizards as human beings, and I believe that they should be treated with respect if they do anything to earn it. And that is what I do. It was part of my understanding with Albus Dumbledore to treat the wizards that come into my keeping with respect, and to keep them away from witchfinders like Mr Morley. That is why the conditions in this prison, as you will have seen, Mr Potter, are more comfortable than you might have imagined.'

'You keep us prisoners of an illusion.'

'Yes, but a happy illusion.'

Harry tried to take in everything he had just heard.

'And what will happen to Mr Morley?'

Mr Bouquett shrugged.

'Oh, we have no powers other than to evict him from the premises. I am quite sick of him. He will just go back to England to continue his work.'

'Why does he hate wizards so much?'

Mr Bouquett looked at him drily through his oval spectacles.

'He has his arguments. Quite rational ones.'

Harry stared back at Mr Bouquett. He was still not sure what to make of him.

'So you're letting us go so that we can keep an eye on Mr Morley?'

Mr Bouquett scrutinised Harry through grey eyes. Despite all he said, he suspected that Mr Bouquett didn't like letting wizards go free.

'I don't wish to keep wizards like you in prison. The world is a safer place for us if you are free. By the way, don't imagine that all the wizards you freed today are good wizards. But there's nothing that can be done about that. Now, I have a lot of work: a prison will not decommission itself. Goodbye, Mr Potter. I hope you won't betray the trust that has been shown in you today.'

He nodded politely to Harry and headed off down the passage. Just before he turned the corner, he turned once more to Harry.

'One more thing: there may come a day when you wizards are thankful that there are witchfinders around to keep you relevant.'

Picking up his wand from the dust, Harry went to the door to Hermione's cell.

He stepped out of the tunnel and under the canopy of a forest. From where he stood the ground sloped upwards, leading to a wall of trees that swept over the brow of a hill, obscuring whatever lay beyond it. He moved his feet and dry, dead leaves cracked under his foot. Even the air was cold. _Where are you?_ On the far left of the scene he saw her, sheltering under the overhanging branches of a yew tree, her hands around her legs, tents flaps fluttering languidly at her back. _I know where we are_. She got to her feet as soon as she saw him.

'What took you so long?' she asked, concern in her eyes as she caressed his arm.

'Sorry, these tunnels are like a maze,' he replied.

'What tunnels?'

Suddenly he understood what she meant. _This can't exactly be a happy memory_. Although in a way it was.

He put his arm around her and began to scan their surroundings for Mr Bouquett's theatre optique. Something was moving in the undergrowth. It looked like light coming through the branches, only its movements were too regular, too circular.

'What's that over there? he asked, pointing at the faint moving light.

'I don't know,' said Hermione in a low voice, quickly raising her wand.

They walked silently towards the moving light, stopping before the bush that concealed it. Harry raised his foot over the bush, then brought it down hard where he could see the moving light. He heard the now familiar sound of the smashing of machinery and the wood faded from view. Hermione looked around at her new surroundings, a look of disorientation and regret quickly replaced with one of understanding. The first thing she did was to hug Harry.

'It's you,' she said, her hand still gripping his arm, 'it's really you. I can't quite get used to it. How did you get out?'

He put his hand on hers.

'Someone made a little opening in my dream and let me out.'

Her eyes flashed.

'It was her, I bet.'

He nodded.

'Yeah, I thought of what you said in the cemetery too. But is she helping us now or leading us to disaster?'

'Both, possibly,' said Hermione. 'Have you seen Mr Morley?'

Harry grinned.

'The witchfinder? Oh yeah, I've seen him. He's temporarily out of action.'

'Harry? What did you do to him?'

'It wasn't just me,' Harry replied. 'Mr Bouquett helped.'

'Mr Bouquett?'

'He's letting us go too.'

'Are you serious? Why?'

'I'll explain later, but if I say one word now, I think you'll understand: Dumbledore.'

'Dumbledore?'

She smiled. _It's been a year since I saw that smile_.

'You definitely will have to explain later. I'm intrigued.'

They looked at each in silence.

'Where are the others? Hermione asked.

'Waiting for us outside this building hopefully.'

'Well, let's go and find them.'

He paused for a moment, looking around the cell in which she had been kept. He imagined the witchfinder leering through the grate at her as she sat in front of the tent. _He must have seen the place conjured for her_. The thought that he should see it disgusted him.

'So you wanted to go back to when we were on the run?' he said.

'Yes,' she replied, turning back from the door. 'Is it not something you want to be reminded of?'

'No, not at all,' he said, walking swiftly across the cell to rejoin her. 'I often think about it. Or I did when I had memories.'

'They're happy memories,' said Hermione. 'Just memories of being with a friend.'

He kissed her lightly on the head as they stood in the doorway.

'I'm glad you were with me. In my cell I was with you.'

'Really?' she exclaimed, her eyes shining. 'Where were we?'

'I'll tell you later,' he replied. 'Like you said, it was just a memory of being with a friend.'

They followed the tunnel upwards before coming to a metal door. Stuck to the door was a post-it note.

'What's this?' Hermione, pointing at the door with her faint wand-light.

Harry peered at the note through the half-light.

'_Gone for a walk in the cemetery_,' he read. 'I wrote this. It's the note I left for Henoc on the front door of his building.'

He opened the door. Behind it was a spiral staircase leading upwards.

The spiral stairs went up several floors before ending at another metal door.

The first thing they saw when they opened the door was a curse exploding against the wall not far from them. With a quick glance at each other, they stepped through the door, their wands ready. The room they entered was a long, high-ceilinged room, with stone walls, wrought iron chandeliers and elegant furnishings. It would have made a grand living room, if it wasn't for the fact that it was in the process of being destroyed. The wizarding battle that was raging there seemingly pitted Caius, Ilaria and Henoc against the new vow wizards Charlie Skelton, Chloe Goodwin and Fitzroger. A dining table lay rent in two, and a leather three-piece suite was on fire, having also been ripped apart.

'I thought they were letting us go!' Harry shouted at Caius as they came alongside in.

'Well they forgot to tell this lot,' replied Caius, quickly parrying a curse from Skelton.

Harry and Hermione's joining the battle soon started to turn the tide, and the new vow wizards were driven back. Then a door opened behind them and Mr Morley entered, limping slightly, several wizards with him.

'I want them taken alive!' Mr Morley shouted as the battle began anew. 'We will extradite them to Britain tonight!'

'What about Mr Bouquett?' shouted Henoc in reply, as he fought off two wizards.

'Not everyone agreed with his decision,' said the witchfinder. 'Some take my view about what should happen to you.'

'Yet again you have wizards do your dirty work!' Hermione replied, as she battled Chloe Goodwin and one of the French wizards. 'Why don't you admit you really wish you were a wizard yourself?'

The evil look on Mr Morley's face suggested that he wasn't about to admit anything of the sort.

'Keep going, Miss Granger,' he said. 'I'm taking a mental note of everything you say. We can go over it again when I come to interrogate you.'

'I told you already,' Harry shouted just as he stunned his adversary. 'You'll never get to her.'

'I don't know, Mr Potter,' said Mr Morley. 'The odds aren't looking too good for you tonight.'

'And you want to know the best part,' called out Chloe Goodwin. 'Because of the soldiers' graves down below, you can't disapparate out of here! It doesn't work!'

Soon the five of them had been driven back into a circle.

'Any ideas?' said Henoc.

'Not really,' Harry replied.

But as their adversaries pushed forward for a final attack, something strange happened. Fitzroger suddenly began first to blink very rapidly, then to grimace. He looked left and right at his comrades, grimaced again, then fired a curse at one of the French wizards. The other wizards turned on him but almost immediately he felled another.

'What are you doing?' shouted Skelton. Then he started to pull a strange face too, cursing in quick succession two French wizards and Chloe Goodwin.

'What's going on?' shouted Caius as they pressed their advantage against their dwindling foe.

'Look at the window!' cried Hermione.

They glanced for a moment. A woman with glasses stood at the window, looking in at them, a look of grim concentration on her face.

'It's Serena!' said Caius.

By now the new vow wizards were defeated, Fitzroger having felled half of them on his own. His last act was to curse himself. He collapsed on top of the witchfinder, and the two of them fell down in a heap.

They left the Pavillon de Vaux as soon as they could, after first having placed a more lasting containment spell on Mr Morley, and having released Mr Bouquett from his. 'This is the end for me,' Mr Bouquett had muttered as they set him free. 'Half the wizards deserted me. No, this means demotion for sure.' They met up with Serena Lynch outside, marvelling at her legilimency skills and asking how she came to be there. It was evening outside, and once Serena told them what day it was, it became clear that they had been imprisoned for about 48 hours.

'I wanted to know what you were doing,' Serena had explained shyly, mostly addressing Hermione and Caius. 'I knew if I looked hard enough, I could find you. I just wanted to help you, the way you helped me.'

They had to go some distance away from the house, into the woods that surrounded it, in order to disapparate. Harry glanced back through the trees at the house, an ancient, thick-walled, three-storey stone building with narrow windows, getting his first look at it just as they disapparated back to Paris. From there, some rather awkward goodbyes were made: Caius and Ilaria decided to stay on in Paris, while Harry, Hermione and Serena left for Britain the following morning. Harry and Hermione parted company from Serena in central London with a promise to keep in touch.

While in London, they had one more place they had to visit before tackling the Burrow: officially Harry was still employed by Vlaminck's Esoteric and Occult.


	21. The last of Harry Potter - Chapter 21

21\. The last

The rain was coming down hard when they apparated to a back alley just off Exmouth Market. It was oppressively dark for the middle of the afternoon, the air unnaturally warm and dripping with humidity. Harry led the way to the shop, following a well-trodden route that he felt estranged from already. There were no customers in the shop when they entered. Armin was behind the counter as usual, stooped over a book. He didn't look up until they were standing almost right next to him.

'So you found each other then?' he commented, eyeing them circumspectly.

'Yes, in the end,' said Hermione.

'Should I be making some sort of comment on the absence of facial hair?' he continued.

'Not necessarily,' replied Harry.

He closed his book and sort of squinted at them.

'The two of you look like you've come to pay your last respects. Only I'm not in my casket yet, I'm happy to say, so you can cheer up.'

'Any chance you could shut up shop for a few minutes?' Harry asked.

Armin glanced around the empty shop.

'I could just about manage it,' he replied. 'It's a good thing that online sales are up.'

'First things first,' said Harry once they were in the back room. 'My name's not James Black.'

'Is that so?' said Armin, presumably feigning a lack of surprise. 'What is your name then?'

'It's Harry Potter.'

'Harry Potter?'

'That's right. And I'm afraid I'll be handing in my notice too — I'll have to go back to my old job.'

'They kept it open for you after all this time? You must be really important.'

'I work in the same place,' said Hermione. 'They'll want him back, trust me.'

'You're colleagues as well? I thought you went to school together?'

'We did that too,' Harry replied.

Armin looked at him strangely.

'Harry Potter you said your name was?'

'That's right.'

'Just bear with me,' said Armin, who was suddenly rummaging among boxes on one of the shelves that lined every inch of wall. After a few moments he returned with a small parcel wrapped in brown paper.

'This must be for you then,' he announced. 'It arrived the other day.'

Harry and Hermione peered down at the parcel in Armin's hand. It was indeed addressed to: '_Harry Potter, Vlaminck's Esoteric and Occult, Exmouth Market, London EC1R_'. The handwriting was unfamiliar and there was no sender.

'That's odd,' Harry murmured.

'Are you going to open it?' asked Armin.

'Not sure,' said Harry, looking at it with some degree of suspicion.

'Expecting a bomb or something?'

'Well …' said Harry, looking questioningly at Hermione.

'I don't know,' she said warily. 'I wouldn't put anything past her.'

'Who's she?' asked Armin. 'Enraged ex-girlfriend?'

'Not exactly,' replied Harry, holding the parcel out to him.

'What do you want me to do with it?' said Armin, reaching out to take it.

But for some reason the parcel never reached his hand. It seemed to flop in mid-air then tumble downwards. As it hit the floor, the parcel started to unravel and disintegrate of its own accord, swiftly leaving only a small metallic object on the floor of the shop. The object looked rather like a silver spider web.

'Hey, that looks like the Seven-Pointed Circle,' Armin exclaimed, bending down to examine it.

'Don't touch it!' Hermione shouted. 'It could be …'

'What?' said Armin, looking up at her.

'Umm …' Hermione stammered, looking quickly at Harry.

Armin shot her a withering look then reached down to pick up the object. His fingers were an inch away from it when it shattered, emitting an ugly hissing sound. Armin pulled his hand back and looked around. Harry was standing over him, his wand still pointed at the remains of the object.

'What was …?' said Armin, staring at Harry in amazement.

'It was cursed,' said Harry to Hermione, lowering his wand. 'Did you feel it?'

'Yes I did,' Hermione, her face pale. 'And it felt nasty.'

'Did you just do what I think you did?' said Armin, his eyes now fixed on the wand.

Harry looked at him then at Hermione. _I've broken the law. But I had no choice_.

'Yes, he did,' said Hermione to Armin. 'I have one too,' she added, taking out her wand and showing it to him.

'We're not supposed to tell … err … non-magical people,' she continued. 'But you were in serious danger. If you'd have touched that …'

'Non-magical people?' said Armin, the irony not lost on him. 'How ridiculous. A lifetime in the occult objects trade and … well, this … Thing is, they never usually do anything.'

'Well, this one would have,' said Harry.

'And so you're both actual wizards?'

'Yes,' said Harry. 'But you mustn't tell anyone, if you want to keep your memory of this intact.' He glanced around instinctively, as if he was half-expecting someone from the Ministry to walk in and do the necessary.

'What's the protocol, do you think,' he said to Hermione, 'when one of us does magic in front of a non-magical person?'

'Well,' she replied, 'if the witness says and does nothing, we should be ok. Unless we turn ourselves in.'

She turned to Armin.

'Do you swear not to say anything?'

Armin started to grin.

'You know what? Even if I did, you'd be surprised how few people would believe me.'

* * *

'So you think _she_ sent the cursed package?' Harry asked.

There was a look of determined concentration on Hermione's face as she sat cross-legged at the other end of the bed. It was a look he'd seen countless times.

'Who else would do it?' she replied.

From where he was sitting, Harry shifted his legs, accidentally kicking a pile of boxes stacked rather too near the bed. The spare bedroom of Armin's flat over the shop doubled as a second store room. It was a small room that overlooked a dingy courtyard, barely enough room for a bed among the overflow of boxes and books. When he asked them to stay, they jumped at the opportunity, knowing that they needed a little time to prepare their return. _That_ could be put off for one day, at least.

They had had a low-key drink with Armin in a pub not far from the shop. The pub was painfully close to an entrance to the Ministry, as Harry and Hermione both knew, even though it wasn't one that wizards frequented. It was raining when they went in and still drizzling when they left, but at least the humidity of the day had dissipated, making the walk back to the shop almost refreshing.

'I can't see why she would want to curse me,' Harry remarked. 'Thought admittedly I don't know much about her.'

'Neither do I,' said Hermione, 'but I don't think that was the intention. I think the idea was to force us to perform magic in front of Armin.'

'So she had to know we would be coming this way.'

'Yes, and only someone with exceptional powers of vision could manage that.'

'But why bother?' Harry asked.

'I don't know yet,' Hermione replied. 'I don't think we have any way of knowing either, not yet at least. She has a plan; I suppose this is part of it. By the way,' she added, 'I know that curse. Or rather I've read about it at least. It's called _the lull_. It's old, obscure and hard to perform. It's a specialist's curse.'

'But she's not a witch, right?. She's… what did you call her? White-eyed?'

'That's Caius's word for it.'

'Right. But how did she manage to put an actual magic curse, a rare one at that, on the package? Does she have tamed wizards too?'

There was a strange look on Hermione's face.

'We've all been her tamed wizards, to some extent.'

Hermione glanced around her; the gesture's meaning was clear to him.

'You think she's watching now.'

Hermione shivered.

'Maybe,' she said. 'She has other people she likes to follow, so she told me. But I suppose you and I sitting here in this bedroom might be especially interesting to her.'

Harry shifted his position again.

'So even when we're alone, we're not really alone. Even if there are things I have to tell you, I can't, because she might be listening.'

She followed him in silence, her eyes dark and penetrating.

'We can't think like that. I don't care. Tell me everything you need to.'

'I'm not sure I know where to begin,' he said. He paused for a moment. 'Coming after me must have cost you enormously.'

Her smile was strange.

'Do you think I had a choice, Harry?'

He looked grim.

'That's two unforgivable things I've done.'

She reached across the bed and touched him on the arm, keeping it there until he looked up.

'If one of those things relates to me, don't even think about including it.'

He smiled in spite of himself.

'You make it so easy for me, Hermione. I can basically count on you to make any sacrifice for me.'

Now she looked away.

'You know the answer to that.'

'Even if it means hurting Ron. And Ginny. And their entire family.'

She looked back at him. _Thin and pale and careworn_.

'You don't spare me at all, Harry. That's good of you. Like I said, with you there is no choice. So you see, that second unforgivable thing isn't yours, it's mine.'

He touched her cheek.

'What did I ever do to deserve you?'

She shook her head, and he could see tears forming in her eyes.

'What's deserving got to do with it?'

He went and sat next to her on the bed, holding her against his chest until he felt her start to calm down. As she pulled away she looked at him with a bleak expression.

'We've probably just put on an entertaining show for her.'

He jumped to his feet, and was in the centre of the room in an instant, weaving around the piles of boxes and pacing what available floor space there was.

'Is there any way of summoning her here? Or finding her?'

'Harry, do you think that will…'

He turned to her.

'I want to see her. Or see her again, I mean. I suppose I saw her, that night I drank Dementico with Caius, Henoc and Ilaria. But I didn't know who she was. She gave me my island.'

'Your island?'

'In the hallucination caused by the Dementico I went to an island. My island, she called it.'

'The Lady in the Bottle,' Hermione murmured.

'Yes, that's right. She asked me my name, right after I drank it for the first time.'

He glanced at Hermione but her head was down, deep in thought.

'She transmits herself from person to person when you drink Dementico. First she must have got to Ilaria or Caius. Then that night she got to you, and from you to me.'

Harry went back to the bed and took Hermione by the hands.

'So how do we find her, this Lady in the Bottle? Do we have to go out on the street and try to score some Dementico?'

Hermione looked at him.

'I've got an idea.'

She reached over the side of the bed and picked up her bag. After a few moments she took out the black-handled knife.

'Where did you get that?' Harry asked. The knife's blade was so slender and sharp and its handle so perfectly made, that it made for a beautiful object, lying there in Hermione's pale hand.

'She gave it to me,' Hermione replied, 'sort of as a reward for sticking the knife in Ron and Ginny.'

She held it out to him.

'Hold it,' she said. He looked at the knife but didn't stretch out his hand.

'I want you to hold it,' she said in a firmer voice.

At last he reached out his hand and took it. The handle was cold in his hand.

'Does it speak to you?' she asked in a low voice. He looked up and saw that Hermione had closed her eyes. She seemed to be shivering slightly.

'It's speaking to me,' she said strangely. 'Almost as if it's some nasty little Horcrux.'

'What does it say?'

'It's telling me I was right to do all that I did. That you're worth the sacrifice. That the others will never understand, or forgive, really.'

He exhaled heavily.

'It's not exactly wrong.'

'That's the point. Unlike a horcrux it tells the truth. It says one more thing: that it's time to cross lines that shouldn't be crossed.'

She opened her eyes and looked pointedly at him.

'Can you hear it?'

He held her gaze. Doing so seemed particularly important.

He threw the knife down on the bed.

'No,' he said at last. She seemed to relax; her eyes were clearer too.

'What a devious little thing it is,' she said in her normal voice. 'It tempts and judges you all at the same time. I'm glad it has no power over you.'

Harry looked thoughtful.

'She was speaking to you through it.'

'In a way.'

'So wouldn't it be possible for us to speak to her through it?'

'If she wants us to,' Hermione replied. The look on her face told him that he had guessed why she had taken out the knife.

'But she will, won't she?' he said, already reaching out to take the knife from where he had left it on the bed. Hermione watched him in silence.

'Here, do you think?' he said, showing the palm of his hand to her.

'No,' she replied. 'If we're going to have matching scars they shouldn't be visible.'

'Ok,' he replied. 'I'll show you where.'

He handed her the knife and took hold of her free hand, guiding her so that she stood just opposite him. Then he pulled up his t-shirt and pointed to an area just below his rib cage.

'Here.'

She looked at him with dark, worried eyes.

'She can stop this from working if she wants.'

'Do you think she'll pass up the chance?'

She gave him a final searching look then raised the knife to his chest, cutting him delicately where he had shown her. Blood began to seep from the wound. Not taking her eyes off him, she raised her other hand and ran her fingers slowly along the cut. She looked at her hand and watched as little drops of blood splashed from it.

'Now you,' said Harry. 'Where do you want me to do it?'

Without speaking, she handed him the bloodied knife, then pulled up her top to reveal the same place, just below her rib cage.

'Same as you,' she said, smiling for just an instant. 'As near the heart as possible.'

He raised the knife and made an incision the same as his, then wiped away some blood as it seeped from the cut.

They pulled their blood stained t-shirts back down and stood looking at one another.

'What's Armin going to say if he finds us like this?' said Hermione. Harry did his best to grin.

'He won't mind as long we don't get blood on his stock'

They locked their hands together so that their blood merged. Soon they began to feel faint. They sat down on the floor next to one another and closed their eyes, their hands still locked together.

* * *

When they opened their eyes they were on a country lane, in front of a rather dilapidated, ivy-covered stone cottage with an overgrown garden. They walked straight up the garden path and went inside. The interior bore the cheap and sparse decoration of a rented house. They climbed the stairs to a spacious landing and made their way to a bedroom door that was ajar.

They entered the bedroom decorated with a mattress, a dresser, a small table and a clothes rack. The room's walls were bare, the stone exposed. The table and the floor were littered with books and papers, with many more books rammed into the shelves of a battered-looking bookcase. In the middle of the room stood a tall, dark-haired woman of about 40 in a long-sleeved green dress and black boots. Her hair was tied back and her face was pale and thin, but she had vivid green eyes.

'What a sweet couple,' said the woman, a keen smile on her lips and a mocking look in her eyes. 'I knew you'd be reunited.'

'Very funny,' said Hermione. She turned quickly to Harry. 'Is this the Lady in the Bottle?'

'Yes,' said Harry, staring at the woman. 'And I've seen her somewhere else too. In another dream, or hallucination. She was a teacher in… in Hogwarts, I think. You refused to come into her class.'

The woman laughed.

'Dear Hermione... So dependable, even in dreams.'

'Lilly,' Harry continued, 'you said your name was Lilly. I suppose you made that up.'

'Not at all, my name really is Lillian. Lillian Herrick. Lilly is what my family used to call me. You see, I really don't go in for lies. And I really was a teacher once too, although not at Hogwarts.'

'A teacher?' said Hermione, aghast at the idea.

'Yes,' said Lillian. 'I've always seen it as my vocation. I had quite a nice life in fact. But I don't think the two of you came to ask me about my biography. I suppose you've come to blame me for all the trouble you've been having.'

'Since you know us so well,' Hermione replied. 'You'll know that we have no intention of shifting any blame away from ourselves. But we know about you now and how you operate, so there's no point continuing your little mind games.'

The response was a tired sort of a smile.

'That would be a shame,' Lillian replied. 'I'm enjoying your story so much. And I particularly want to find out what you're going to do when you get back to your … loved ones, shall I call them?'

'Put it another way,' said Harry. 'If you don't leave of your accord, we'll find a way of flushing you out. I think you might find it quite unpleasant to be purged from a wizard's mind.'

'That sounds quite exciting,' she replied, apparently quite unconcerned. 'But are you sure your type of magic works on mine?'

'I don't know,' said Harry, 'but I think I'll enjoy trying.'

She shook her head slowly, like a teacher disappointed at a student who hadn't grasped her point.

'You're overreacting, really you are. I don't sit around spying on your every move. I don't have the time or the inclination. And I don't even need to anyway.'

She shot them a look of affectionate pity.

'Why don't you sit down and I'll explain. To put your minds at ease …'

'Where?' said Hermione.

The next moment a round, wooden table with three high-backed chairs materialised next to them in the middle of the room.

'Shall we?' she asked, pulling out one of the chairs.

'That's quite impressive for someone who claims not to be a witch,' Hermione remarked.

'Oh there's quite a few things I've learned how to do over the years. But I'm glad you're impressed.'

After a few moments' hesitation, Harry and Hermione rather circumspectly sat down around the table with their strange host.

'You won't mind, I hope, if I don't offer you any refreshments,' said Lillian. 'It wouldn't be beyond my capabilities, but as you probably know, these things never taste very good, or do you a lot of good, when they're conjured up out of thin air, and it doesn't help that your physical bodies are not entirely here. That might cause some problems with digestion.'

'We won't think any less of your hospitality,' said Hermione.

Lillian Herrick smirked at them from across the table.

'Anyway, there's a little misunderstanding I have to clear up first. Contrary to what you seem to think, I'm not omnipotently party to your thoughts. I don't so much see your thoughts as _feel_ them. Even from a distance I feel your emotions, your desires. It's kind of a very potent form of empathy.'

'Empathy?' exclaimed Hermione. 'As far as I understand it, you get a kick out of manipulating people.'

'No, no. What you call manipulation is just the process of dismantling the mental barriers stopping you doing what you really want.'

'Oh right,' said Harry sarcastically. 'So you're actually some kind of life coach?'

She laughed at this.

'In a way. But I don't charge for my services: as so little of it is me and so much of it is you, it wouldn't be fair. Just a little push and off you go, where you always wanted but didn't dare. It's almost effortless. You should be thanking me. You, Harry, wanted to ruin your perfect life, and you, Hermione, just wanted your own corner of Harry's heart. Haven't I delivered? I reckon the two of you owe me.'

'I thought you just said that empathy was your line of business,' said Hermione, trying to ignore what had just been said. 'How come you take such fun from people's misery?'

'But I'm not the one who inflicts it, Hermione. I'm just following the story. You're the one doing all the inflicting. And another thing: doing wrong is good for all of us.'

'How did you work that one out?' said Harry.

'Oh, it's my main insight on life,' she replied. 'Maybe I should write a book on it. A kind of self-help book.'

'Sounds wonderful,' said Hermione. 'Perhaps you can follow it up with a guide on how to brew Dementico.'

'You know this is all going just the way I imagined it would,' Lillian Herrick exclaimed with a little paroxysm of delight. 'Are you having as much fun as I am?'

Harry and Hermione said nothing.

'Oh, and I don't need to produce Dementico myself. It just makes my work easier, by opening people's minds in the right way. And it gives me particular access to people like you. Do you know what the funny part is? Part of the appeal of Dementico is that if you drink it, it can help you see into other people's minds. Which is something quite a lot of people are interested in doing. The problem is that they don't know who else is watching.'

'And you got to me through Ilaria and Caius,' said Harry.

Lillian nodded.

'Yes, it was quite lucky that Ilaria was so besotted with you. It made her very curious to know what you really thought of her and whether you were happy with Ginny.'

Harry looked down at the table.

'I suppose you were sort of happy with her, weren't you, Harry?' she asked, glancing across at Hermione to gauge her reaction. 'It's just that you couldn't quite give her all of your heart. Poor Ginny has suffered a lot because of it.'

'Don't speak about her like that, ' said Harry. 'I know what she felt.'

'Festering with jealousy, that's how I found her that night, while you frolicked on your island,' said Lillian, her voice suddenly harder.

'And you _removed her barriers_, I suppose,' said Harry, anger welling up inside him.

'Faced with disloyalty on that scale, what was she supposed to do? Just swallow it? The effort on my part was virtually nothing. All I had to say was _you're right_.'

Hermione looked away.

'What do you think she would have done if she found your note slipped in amongst Harry's books?,' said Lillian, turning to Hermione with a searching glance. Hermione tried to avoid looking back but found eye contact forced on her. 'It would have been so easy to lead her to it. But I didn't. There was no need.'

'You know this playing at moral indignation doesn't really suit you,' Hermione replied.

'I'm not,' Lillian replied. 'I'm just looking at things from Ginny's point of view. You should try it some time.'

'I have,' Hermione exclaimed. 'Since you like spying on people's emotions you must know I have.'

Lillian Herrick looked placidly at Hermione.

'I suppose you really think you do, Hermione. But do you really see that no matter how highly Ginny thinks of you as a friend and as a person, your presence in Harry's life is unbearable to her?'

Hermione had no reply. She glanced at Harry, who looked back, a look of helplessness on his face.

'How long did you think you could avoid this happening? With or without my help? I wish I had thought of sending Harry that note - I would have considered it a masterstroke! You've delivered, Hermione, amazingly well. But then you all have: Harry and Ginny, and Ron, not to mention Caius and Ilaria.'

'But if you don't need Dementico to access people's minds,' said Hermione, the mention of Caius and Ilaria suddenly jogging her memory, 'and if you're not a witch, then what is your method?'

'I'm glad you asked,' Lillian replied. 'I'm quite tempted to tell you, but I think you'd prefer to work it out for yourself. You like having a little mystery to untangle, don't you, Hermione? The more cryptic the better?'

Her eyes twinkled with a merry sort of malice.

'I'll draw you its symbol, if you like, and then you can tell me, if you know the answer. What do you think?'

'I've got no choice, I imagine,' Hermione replied tersely, trying to disguise her curiosity as far as possible. Lillian sat back in her chair. Her eyes took on a distant expression. Then she looked down at the table in front of them. A series of circles began to burn themselves into its surface. Once seven concentric circles had been drawn, a series of intersecting lines added themselves, like spokes on a wheel.

'The Seven-Pointed Circle,' Hermione said in a low voice.

'Very good,' said Lillian. 'I already told you how much I love education.'

'So the method actually works?' Hermione asked. 'You have a reliable source text, do you?'

'I've pierced the material together from various sources over the years, studied the languages the different versions were written in, analysed the differences in translation from one text to another. Since you know something about the Seven-Pointed Circle, you'll also know it goes back thousands of years.'

For a moment Hermione thought of bringing up Vlaminck's Esoteric and Occult bookshop, but decided not to. Suddenly it didn't make sense for Lillian Herrick to have sent the cursed package in Harry's name. She decided not to mention the package. To her relief, Harry stayed silent too. Lillian Herrick appeared to be enjoying her moment of revealing too much to actually probe their minds.

'I think you, of all people, Hermione, can appreciate how much study and dedication that I've put into perfecting my art.'

'Yes,' said Hermione, rather distractedly, 'I see that.'

'And since the both of you are such powerful and illustrious magicians, you ought to find it impressive that a person who has none of your powers has been able to access your minds and wander freely in your world.'

'It is impressive,' said Harry. 'So we'll be looking into how to stop you.'

Lillian smiled.

'If only it were that simple, Harry. You wizards live in a remarkably insular world, built around the idea that your magic is the only kind of magic. How do you stop a magic you can't use, or understand, or even detect?'

'You've got a point,' said Hermione. 'All the more reason for wizards to start thinking about it.'

'One thing I don't understand,' said Harry. 'Is why you're telling us all this.'

'It makes things more interesting,' replied Lillian quickly. 'Like you, Harry, I abhor complacency. This way I'm forced to move onto a new project.'

'Instead of doing that,' Hermione interjected, 'why don't you just stop right here? You've made your point. You're not insane, or not exactly insane. In a way you're really quite lucid. You could easily choose not to act in this way.'

She listened to her in silence, her expression for once unreadable.

'The story's started writing itself,' she replied. 'It can't be abandoned here. In fact, it's just about to get interesting.'

'What do you mean?' said Hermione.

'I mean the choices you'll make tomorrow, or the day after, when you go back and try and rebuild the relationships you've pretty much shattered. I don't want to miss it, you see I have a weakness for stories that go wrong. Like mine did. The truth is that I applaud the choices you've made so far. You sensed the complacency and self-satisfaction that were poisoning your lives. Your instincts didn't betray you. I don't say join me now. You aren't ready for that. But see if the path you're setting yourselves on doesn't bring you to me in the end. You needn't worry about it: the darkness and misery I offer are gifts worth having. It's only when you're in darkness that you can try to scratch at the light.'

She put her hands on the table and looked at them almost expectantly, as if she had just finished making a sales pitch.

'Well that sounds tempting,' Hermione remarked drily.

'I don't expect you to believe me now,' Lillian replied, apparently unabashed.

'What I think,' said Harry, suddenly intervening, 'is that you can't have it both ways. Do you want us to write our own story or for you to write it behind our backs?'

'That's an astute question, Harry,' said Lillian, smiling like a teacher pleased with a student's reply. 'You should do it yourselves, of course. That would be much more satisfying than getting involved myself.'

'I suppose that's something,' Hermione remarked.

'And anyway,' Lillian continued in a bright, business-like tone, 'I'm going to be very busy from now, as my new project is going to be a real challenge.'

She paused, stretched her arms outwards then put her hands back under the table.

'As the two of you undoubtedly know,' she went on, 'the wizarding world has got a bit complacent of late, hidden behind its many layers of secrecy. I think it would do it good to come out into the open.'

'Don't tell me you're behind these witchfinder people too!' Hermione exclaimed, a kind of tired exasperation rising up inside her.

'You know that's not how I do things,' Lillian replied. 'They're doing quite a good job by themselves. Having said that, it is amusing to egg them on, to show them the door without giving them the key. But I wouldn't worry too much for the moment at least: for every genuine clue I give them I throw out a dozen false trails. Still, I'd recommend vigilance. They are very persistent, and one day you might find that the walls of the wizarding world aren't as strong as you think they are.'

Hermione tried to muster a reply, but no coherent thought would form in her brain.

'In fact,' Lillian continued, 'you could do me a favour: you can go and warn your fellow wizards yourselves.'

'Don't worry, we will,' replied Harry coolly.

'Although,' Lillian continued, her smile even wider, 'you should probably pick one of you to do it. The last thing you'll want to do from now on is to show the world any sign of complicity between you.'

Her victorious gaze flitted from Hermione to Harry and back again.

'Hermione, you're looking terribly tired all of a sudden. I'm afraid you've had too much to deal with today. Harry, you should take her home, make sure she gets some rest.'

'It may surprise you to hear this,' Hermione replied coolly 'but I'm not too interested in your concern.'

'I know, I know. It isn't time yet,' Lillian replied. 'Of course the idea that the wizarding world could be exposed worries you. That's understandable. Ordinarily I wouldn't care either way myself. But this seems like a good way to keep things interesting for you, and for me. Otherwise I might get bored. Things might just degenerate into a sad little melodrama. And the two of you are capable of so much more, as you've proven so many times. That's why I let Harry out of his cell in the witchfinder prison. I really can't think of anyone I'd rather share all this with. Whether you like it or not, I've become rather fond of you.'

'In that case,' said Hermione, 'leave us alone. Let us live in peace.'

Lillian gave her a strange look. There was a kind of despondency in her eyes that she hadn't seen before.

'It will come to us all in the end,' she replied. She seemed to sigh at the prospect, and for a moment her face was lined with weariness. 'But I'm afraid there's going to be a lot of pain and darkness to be endured until then.'

Hermione and Harry looked at her but couldn't bring themselves to say anything.

'So here we are,' said Lillian. 'You know, I wish I could have been your teacher. I really did like being a teacher.'

Her voice hardened.

'You can send your Aurors to search this house if you like,' she continued. 'Though it'll hardly be worth it. I'll be long gone by the time they get here. And I don't leave many traces.'

'Overconfidence has been the downfall of a lot of people, you know,' Harry remarked, smiling coldly.

Lillian's expression remained as bright as ever.

'And maybe you'll be able to say the same thing about me someday,' she replied. 'It's going to be interesting to find out anyway. But I've kept you too long. You'll be wanting to get back to those loved ones of yours. But don't worry, I'll be seeing you again, when things are more advanced. Till then, be good.'

Her face was already beginning to fade before she finished speaking. Just before she disappeared from sight, the room and the house along with her, she could be seen laughing gently to herself, apparently at the thought of the words 'be good'.

* * *

In silence they picked themselves up off the floor of the spare bedroom and changed out of their bloodstained t-shirts and into clean clothes. Harry wiped the blood off the floor while Hermione sat on the bed, deep in thought. She smiled a bitter kind of smile when he sat down next to her on the bed.

'Do you know what we've got to do?' Her voice was scarcely more than whisper.

'What?'

'We have to put things back in their place.'

He nodded stiffly.

'You mean everything.'

'Yes everything.'

'So we go back to the Burrow and ask Ginny and Ron to forgive the unforgivable.'

'That's right,' her smile, as bleak as it had been, had faded away. 'But it won't be enough'

'What do you mean?'

'You and I have to drift apart. Over time.'

'We what?!'

'We have to. It will be imperceptible at first, but eventually we'll reach the point where they'll ask us: _what happened between you and Harry? Have the two of you fallen out? You seem so distant towards one another these days._' And we'll say: '_no, nothing in particular has happened: we've just grown apart, that's all. It happens when people get older_. And on that day they'll actually regret that we're no longer such good friends as we used to be.'

Harry sat in silence, his eyes facing the wall.

'What she said about my presence in your life being unbearable to Ginny was right,' Hermione continued. 'Or at least the way I'm present in your life. The way I interfere in your life.'

Harry turned back to her.

'Hermione, you're…'

Her face was blank.

'Harry, you know it has to be this way.'

He took hold of her hand.

'I understand. But tell me what _you_ want.'

'Now's not a good time to be asking me.'

She looked away into the room but didn't withdraw her hand. After a few moments she looked back.

'Do you agree to do this, Harry?'

He nodded.

'Yes, but only because what you are to me can't be changed.'

She squeezed his hand.

'One look a year from you is enough for me.'

* * *

Dusk hung over the fields that stretched out in front of them. The sun had left a swathe of pink and red above the ashen layer of cloud that descended to the horizon. They had been in open country for the best part of three hours, skirting the villages as far as possible. But the merriness with which they had set out had worn down and now their destination was close.

Going back to the Burrow couldn't be put off any longer. The night before they had lain in the bed in Armin's spare room, piecing together the story they had to tell, until they were too tired to go on. They spoke little of Lillian Herrick, other than Hermione vowing to begin studying the Seven-Pointed Circle as soon as possible. Armin had been only too happy to agree to her coming to the shop on a regular basis to examine his copy of _The Testament of Sie_. _It's what she wants you to do_, Harry had said to Hermione. _I know, but there's no other way_, she had replied.

The following day they had apparated into Devon, but left the last 12 or so miles for them to cover on foot. The air in the country was cooler and drier, the sky alternating brief snatches of sunshine with cloud. They avoided serious topics of conversation for the most part. One topic Hermione felt she had to broach was what the public version of events would be. Her suggestion was that Harry had indeed had his memory damaged by an accidental memory charm, and that he had been kept out of public view until his memory had recovered. She even suggested that it be made known that Ilaria had been hired as Harry's minder to keep him safe. Harry agreed to the idea, even accepting that he would probably have to give an interview to _The Daily Prophet_. _But this all depends on what happens with Ron and Ginny_, he had added. Hermione agreed and said no more on the subject.

As evening fell the cloud cover began to lift and the temperature began to drop. Finally, as they reached the brow of a low hill, the straggling lights of Ottery St Catchpole stretched out in the darkness below them.

'Shall we stay up here, just for a little while?' said Harry. Hermione nodded quickly. They dropped down into a small grass-filled depression off to the side of the bridleway. It lay just out of sight of the path and the land below. They took out their wands and each cast a little ball of fire and light, which coalesced and kept them warm.

'It suits you by the way,' said Hermione, breaking the silence. 'Without the beard I mean. I forgot to mention it.'

'Yeah, I'm probably better off without it,' he replied. 'Although I must admit that when I had it, I thought I looked sort of good.'

'You did,' she replied, remembering her meeting with him in St Bride's churchyard. 'But I like you back the way you are now.'

He took off his glasses and examined them. He found that one of the lenses was slightly cracked. With a grin he turned to Hermione.

'I don't suppose you could …'

She smiled and took out her wand.

'While you're at it,' he added, 'could you change them back to their old style?'

She whispered _occulus reparo_ and the crack vanished. With another wave of her wand Harry's round glasses were back on his face.

'Thanks,' he said, quickly adjusting the spectacles on his nose. 'Better?'

Hermione smiled again.

'Better.'

'There's one more thing,' he continued, turning up his hair at the end where it swept down across his face. 'Could you do anything with this?'

'I thought I said to you once, never let me cut your hair again,' Hermione said quietly.

'Yeah, I remember.'

She paused to consider the proposition.

'But I think I meant only with actual scissors,' she continued, a smirk on her lips. 'A haircutting charm's another thing entirely. How would you like it?'

'Ah, you know. I trust you,' he replied.

'Ok, done,' she said after a few moments. He raised his hand to the back of his neck, which was suddenly exposed to the breeze.

He leaned back against the hill and looked up at the sky. The sky was now completely black, and the stars were visible in every corner of it. He stared into the sky for a few moments, until he realised that she was looking at him. He turned and smiled at her. She was sitting next to him cross-legged, her knee touching his, the little flames of the enchantment they had cast flickering faintly just beyond her.

'I can't quite believe what we're about to…' he began.

'Sshh,' she replied. 'Didn't we say we weren't going to talk about it anymore?'

'You're right.'

He looked up at the stars. _It's senseless_, he thought. _It's not fair_.

'Hermione,' he began again.

Her gaze was piercing in the dark.

'Don't say anything,' she said in a low voice. 'Let's just keep the moment going for a little bit longer. You know, Harry, for me tonight is the last of you.'

He made no reply, instead silently taking hold of her right hand. It felt cold so he tried to squeeze some warmth into it. Then he guided her hand and placed it against his chest, at the point where the wound lay beneath the still blood stained t-shirt.

The gate to the Burrow lay a little way ahead. The lane was somewhat muddy, as it often was. From where they were walking they could already make out some of the lights in the house.

They were no more than a few metres from the gate when Harry stopped.

'What is it?' said Hermione, turning to him in the dark and touching him gently on the arm. He looked at her and tried to smile, but instead he could feel himself starting to shake.

'The cold's got into you,' she said with concern. She started to rub her hands vigorously up and down his sleeve to try and warm him up.

'I'll be fine,' he said, a brittle laugh half jumping out of him. 'I just need to get a grip on myself.'

She dropped her arms to her sides and studied him in silence on the dark lane, her back to the house.

'Hermione,' he said.

'Yes?'

'I … I suppose it'll be teatime.'

He glanced up, his gaze caught for a moment by the lights shining in the house.


	22. The last of Harry Potter - Epilogue

Epilogue: An opening

Iona Deasy stood outside the Psychology classroom. She brushed a strand of blonde hair out of her eyes and pulled down the sleeves of her school jumper. The school felt empty, with little more than a trickle of pupils passing in the corridor, one or two gawping at her, presumably wondering what she was waiting for. Why did Miss Herrick want to see her after school? She normally had good marks, never messed around and had been praised for her contribution in class. Of all her teachers Miss Herrick was her favourite: not only was she obviously really intelligent, but she was one of those teachers who could keep control in class without ever raising her voice. She would be genuinely sorry to have disappointed her.

She knocked on the door of the classroom and went inside. Miss Herrick was sitting at her desk, apparently deep in concentration. Iona hovered in the doorway of the classroom, not sure what was wanted from her. Finally Miss Herrick looked up and smiled serenely.

'Hello Iona, there's no need to be worried. You haven't done anything wrong. Please take a seat.'

Iona sat down at a desk in the front row. Miss Herrick came over and sat down at the desk next to her.

'It's quite the opposite in fact. I wanted to speak to you because you're my most promising student.'

Iona looked down at the desk.

'Oh, really?'

'Really.'

'What about Simon?'

'Simon Edwards? Oh he's certainly talented, but I think you're more suited to what I had in mind.'

Feeling that she was possibly being rude by not looking at her teacher, Iona looked up. Miss Herrick's green eyes were the first thing she saw. They were bright, almost dazzling, but their expression was warm and reassuring.

'I wanted to ask if you were interested in taking some extra lessons,' said Miss Herrick.

'Me?' said Iona. She paused for a moment to think. 'I haven't been getting behind, I don't think.'

'Not at all. This is about going beyond what's in the syllabus. I don't think the other students would be able to cope.'

Iona hesitated.

'I don't know,' she said. 'It sounds interesting, but I wouldn't want to fall behind on other schoolwork.'

'I'll make sure it won't interfere with your other work.'

'Oh … I see,' said Iona.

Miss Herrick smiled pleasantly.

'Does it make you uncomfortable to be singled out in this way from all your classmates?'

Iona blushed slightly.

'I understand that completely,' Miss Herrick continued. 'If you are interested in taking extra lessons, there would be no need to tell them, if you didn't want to. I won't let it slip. So you'll be just as you were. No one will think you're a swot or anything like that.'

'Ok,' said Iona. 'What would the lessons be about?'

'It's applied psychology of a kind,' said Miss Herrick with a serious look. 'Only it goes well beyond what we are able to do under the curriculum. I thought of you because I saw how interested you were by the discussion we had in class on mind control, telekinesis and telepathy. You seemed genuinely interested in whether they are really possible. To a certain extent they are.'

'Really? And you can teach me that?'

'Possibly, but it depends a lot on you. But the results can be spectacular. It's the closest thing to magic we have.'

Iona shivered slightly and looked out of the window. Suddenly she recollected the dreams she had been having in recent weeks: in her dreams she was visited by the witch whose wand she had found, calling Iona to her, to go with her to some unknown destination.

'It's not a coincidence,' she began in a suspicious voice, 'that recently I've been having a recurring dream where some great and secret knowledge is about to be revealed to me. If what you say is true, then I've already had a demonstration of these powers.'

'Iona, this is exactly why it's you I'm asking,' replied Miss Herrick. 'How many students do you think would have figured this out so quickly? You don't realise how gifted you are. You have potential that shouldn't be wasted.'

Iona looked again at her teacher. She drummed her fingers on the desk then ran her hand through her hair.

'Don't make your mind up now,' said Miss Herrick. 'Have a think about it. There's no real hurry. Although if you are interested, the material is quite complicated, so it'll take a while to get to the point where you see practical results.'

'And this will enable me, to all intents and purposes, to do a kind of magic?' Iona asked, her heart beating faster.

'Yes, but you would have to agree to a sort of code of ethics. We can't just do whatever we want with the power; that would be far too dangerous. That's another reason why I thought of you: you're very mature for your age, and you have a clear sense of right and wrong. Without that this method is almost worthless.'

Iona glanced around the classroom: the rows of desks, the posters on the walls, the windows that opened onto the rear playground, from where she could hear the sound of a football hitting the school building as part of an after-school kickabout. _This sort of thing doesn't usually happen in a place like this_, she thought to herself. She looked back at Miss Herrick, who was sitting patiently at the desk beside her, a bright, serene look on her face.

'Magic,' said Miss Herrick, 'at almost any moment and in any place, is much closer than you think. Little more than a veil hides it from our sight.'

End of part 1


	23. The vigilance of Hermione Granger - Ch 1

1\. The golden witch

A golden light was descending over London, glittering on the glass towers and reflecting dimly in stone and concrete. It was a light unseen in London itself, proceeding from no meteorological phenomenon, but in fact projected onto a vast, dome-like ceiling an unknown distance underground. This was London as it was seen from the viewing gallery at the very top of the Ministry of Magic, by the scattering of witches and wizards taking their afternoon tea break there.

Hermione Granger's eyes wandered from the pages spread across the small round table in front of her. She liked to look out over this silent, shimmering London from the gallery overlooking the upper cafeteria: the illusion was almost convincing enough to make her feel she was no longer underground. She was sitting by herself, but she was used to it. Her long brown hair fell limply over her shoulders, framing her face, which was thinner and paler than it had once been. Her eyes seemed almost to be reflecting the golden illumination stretching out before her. A dull ache flickered behind her left eye as she played with the pen in her hand, glancing at the spot that was unravelling on the sleeve of her silver and black striped sweater. The sweater was one of her favourites.

'Apparently you can see half of London from up here,' a voice said gently just off to her right. Instinctively she pulled a Ministry file over the pages she had been studying. Then she turned her head slightly and smiled. Arthur Weasley was standing next to her table in a dapper blue suit, balancing a cup and saucer on a tea tray.

'This London or the real one?' she replied in a warm voice.

'Am I interrupting?' said Mr Weasley, a look of concern clouding his gaze as he glanced at the papers spread out over the table in front of her.

'Of course not,' she replied. 'We can take our tea break together if you'd like,' she added, standing up and pulling out the chair next to her. Mr Weasley smiled and sat down with aplomb.

'How's Ron?' he asked brightly, rather to her surprise.

_You speak to him more often than I do_, she thought to herself, before quickly replying:

'Basking in the afterglow of a successful operation by the Auror Office.'

'The Belhaine operation?' he said, a wistful look in his eye. 'They've done themselves proud, those boys. Are you going to the press conference?'

'I … uh … I'm not sure,' she replied. 'I'm really going to be terribly busy this afternoon.' She felt rather disarmed by the question, and annoyed at herself for not foreseeing it. _Of course he expects me to go. It's a big thing. Why wouldn't I go?_

Mr Weasley frowned slightly in reply.

'How's Mrs Weasley?' Hermione ventured, seeking to steer him away from that subject.

'Fine, though I'm sure she'd like to see more of you.'

She wondered whether Mrs Weasley really would like to see more of her. She knew the kind of looks she had been getting lately whenever she visited the Burrow. She reflected fleetingly that maybe Mr Weasley was speaking more for himself than for the matriarch of the Weasley family.

'How are Ginny and Harry?' she continued. Mr Weasley looked at her quizzically, as if he could hardly believe she was asking him the question. It occurred to her that maybe she had gone too far. 'We haven't had much chance to catch up with them lately,' she added quickly, trying to smile into the process. 'Ron and Harry have been so busy with this Belhaine business.'

Mr Weasley nodded. She could hardly expect him to be convinced. _Does he think I should have been involved in the raid? I'm not an Auror_.

'Really, Hermione, they don't tell _me_ anything,' he replied, the same wistful look in his eye. 'But then again, I can't really expect them to. confide in me.'

'You're right,' she said. 'Excuse me.'

He smiled again and gulped down a mouthful of tea. Then he leaned in slightly closer.

'How are you, Hermione?'

For a moment she imagined that she was sitting in front of a psychiatrist. _I suppose they all think I need one_.

'I'm fine,' she replied, brightly enough. 'Just very busy, as always.'

'You don't need to hide what you're doing,' he said in the same friendly voice. 'I won't think the worse of you.'

She glanced across at him. She thought she could detect a slight sadness in his expression.

'You don't think I'm wasting my time then?' she said in a lower voice.

'You've never struck me as the kind of person who would waste their time,' replied Mr Weasley, sipping his tea again. 'In any event, I didn't come looking for you to give you a lecture.'

'No, you're not the kind of person who would do that.'

He nodded and looked down into his teacup before talking another quick mouthful of tea.

She knew that he had seen the pages she had been reading before he had arrived. She also knew that she was frequently the subject of concerned conversations at the dinner table in the Burrow. She knew what he was going to talk about, and suspected that he had been pushed into doing it. She decided not to waste any more time avoiding the subject.

'I'm very close to mastering it,' she said quickly, her words filling the silence.

'The Seeing Circle?' he said, glancing up from his cup.

'Some people have called it that,' she replied. 'The Circle of Sie would be a more correct form. I prefer the Seven-Pointed Circle.'

There was a pause, in which the only sound was the conversation of a pair of wizards speaking in low voices across the gallery.

'The Seven-Pointed Circle, then,' repeated Mr Weasley in a low voice. 'And what will it enable you to do, mastering the technique?' he asked, in the same, almost conspiratorial tone.

'Take on those who want to use it to bring down wizard society,' she replied firmly.

Mr Weasley didn't reply.

'Why is it so hard for everyone to believe that this is a real threat?' she exclaimed, her voice seeming to reverberate in the void left by his silence. Her voice had come out louder than she intended.

The wizards sitting a few tables away had fallen silent and were looking at them. Mr Weasley shot them an affable look of acknowledgement, while Hermione glared back in silence. One of the wizards tutted slightly and the other shook his head before turning away.

'Can't you admit that it's theoretically possible?' Hermione continued in a lower tone.

Mr Weasley seemed to muse over the question.

'That a kind of Muggle magic could be used to expose wizarding society?'

Mr Weasley deliberated. Hermione crossed and uncrossed her legs, gnawing her lower lip.

'It is possible in theory, of course,' he said finally. 'Some Muggles wield impressive powers, powers that would compete with what any half-decent wizard is capable of doing. I think even the odd book has been written on it.' _Yes, I've read all four of them_.

'I read the report you sent to Kingsley,' he said urbanely. _Plenty of people read it, for all the good that has done us_.

'Did you? And what did you make of it?'

His tone was one of easy and comforting familiarity, but she felt as if she were before the entire Wizengamot. She very rarely brought up the subject in front of Ron's family, but she knew that the details of her nocturnal activities and obsessive studies frequently did the rounds at the Burrow. She didn't know Mr Weasley had gone to the trouble of reading up on the Seven-Pointed Circle. The thought was something of a comfort to her.

'The sort of risk you're getting at, as far as I understand,' said Mr Weasley, 'is that this Lillian Herrick could try to curse a wizard, a high-ranking Ministry wizard, one with all sorts of magical security clearances, and convince him to undo the enchantments that keep our world secret.'

'That's one way of doing it,' she replied warily.

'And I suppose it would work, at least that part of it would,' Mr Weasley continued.

She dragged back the reply she was about to give and waited for him to go on, her mouth still half-open.

'Thing is,' said Mr Weasley, 'the behaviour of such a wizard would be so suspicious that the Auror Office would be onto him in no time on suspicion that some kind of dark magic was at work.'

She tapped her foot under the table.

'If that way doesn't work she'll find another,' she replied quickly.

'Well, maybe she's still looking, your Lillian Herrick,' said Mr Weasley.

_That's just a polite way of saying nothing has happened since I filed my report_. She hoped she hadn't started scowling.

'She's not my creation,' she retorted, her patience starting to disintegrate. 'I didn't inflict her on the wizarding world. She decided to inflict herself on us, to wake us from complacency.'

Mr Weasley listened quietly, as if he was waiting for Hermione to compose herself.

_I shouldn't have said the word complacency_. She knew that some people saw the character of Lillian Herrick not only as an invention, but actually as a mouthpiece for veiled criticism of the Ministry.

'Two years ago this Lillian Herrick gave you a nasty shock.'

At this remark her heart sank. _It's all in my mind, that's what they all think_. Still, she had to give him credit for showing even that much understanding.

'I suppose you could call it a shock,' she replied with a sigh. She wouldn't have called it a shock.

'As far as I can see,' Mr Weasley continued, 'what this person likes above all is to worm her way into people's minds in order to torment them. That in itself is quite serious, particularly as she is just as likely to attack wizards as Muggles.'

'Wizards even more so; we're more of a challenge,' she put in.

'Still,' Mr Weasley went on, 'she doesn't seem to do it as a prelude to killing them, like a certain person once did.'

_You can say his name, he died years ago_.

'She seems more interested in making people miserable.' He seemed to smile to himself at this observation.

'I suppose that makes her not much of a threat,' Hermione began, in a tone as conciliatory as she could manage.

'In any case, once she revealed herself to you, she lost some of her power to influence you. Perhaps this story of how she's going to help witchfinders bring down the wizarding world is intended to keep you interested in her, to make you miserable, Hermione. In that she's succeeded, I would say.'

She smiled in spite of herself and chewed her lower lip again. The same thought had occurred to her many times. Around the Ministry, people already thought she had lost the plot. And a pre-emptive strike on witchfinders would be sheer insanity, as it would only serve to confirm what the witchfinders had always claimed.

'I … I wouldn't say I'm miserable,' she replied, her voice faltering slightly. She had pretty given up trying to convince people that she was fine. She fell silent and tried to smile at Mr Weasley in a placatory manner. But the smile didn't last long and she ended up staring down into her lap, squeezing her nails into the palms of her hand.

Mr Weasley looked at her with a rather crest-fallen expression then pulled his chair a little closer to hers.

'How does it work?' he said, in a slightly conspiratorial voice. She looked up.

'Do you really want to know?' she asked. She wasn't sure if he was humouring her, but she wanted to tell him anyway.

'Yes.'

'It's all about words really,' she said. Suddenly the gnawing doubts were giving way to enthusiasm. 'Through the simple manipulation of words, the user can gain access to powers to manipulate objects in space, in time and within the mind. When _The Testament of Sie_ was first written down, over 2,500 years ago,' she continued, gesturing to the scattering of pages on the table, 'writing was something new to the world. Very few people had access to it. It must have seemed like magic.'

She looked up at Mr Weasley again. He was following her closely, seemingly in anticipation of what was to follow. But suddenly his concentration was broken.

'Arthur!' came a booming voice from behind him and a large hand came down squarely on Mr Weasley's shoulder. Mr Weasley jumped slightly and swivelled around in his seat. A tall, vigorous, middle-aged man with a mop of wiry, grey-brown hair was standing over their table. He wore a battered brown jacket and a thick green pullover and carried a stack of files under one arm. He had a round, red face with pronounced laughter lines and sharp grey eyes.

'Mortimer,' said Mr Weasley politely, standing up and shaking the man's hand.

'Hello Mr Knott,' said Hermione politely.

'Hermione,' said Mr Knott, nodding curtly to her. Then he turned back to Mr Weasley.

'I'm sorry to take you away from your little tête-à-tête here, but there's something rather urgent I have to discuss with you, in private if you don't mind.'

'That's all right Mortimer,' said Mr Weasley, withdrawing his hand rather gingerly from Mortimer Knott's firm handshake. 'Was there anything else you wanted to tell me, Hermione?' he said, turning back to Hermione.

'No,' she replied quietly, and started to gather up the pages on the table.

Still looming over the table, Mr Knott peered suspiciously at the pages she was collecting together. Suddenly he thrust out a large hand and scooped up one of them. She began to stand up, but then sat down again, saying nothing. Mr Knott read the first few lines and began to frown.

'Still on the Urartians, are we?' he boomed.

Apart from being Undersecretary for Muggle Relations, Mortimer Knott was known around the Ministry as a formidable Classical scholar.

'I am,' she replied stiffly.

'Tell me,' he said in a lower voice, 'how many languages did this text pass through before reaching English?'

'Four or five, depending on which version you read.'

'Conclusion?' said Mr Knott briskly, an almost military cadence to his voice.

'Umm, I'm sorry?' she stammered.

'What, Hermione, can we glean from this?'

'Perhaps you'd better tell me, sir.'

Mr Knott's chin wobbled slightly.

'The conclusion, Hermione, is that whatever meaning this text ever had has almost certainly been lost in translation,' said Mr Knott, his voice more booming than ever.

'The English translation works well enough.'

Her reply was greeted with a snort of derision.

'Induces hallucinations, does it?' Mr Knott demanded.

'That's not exactly how I would put it.'

'Unblinkers the mind, I suppose,' he continued. 'Doors of perception opening and all that. You feel as if you're being enlightened.'

Hermione looked up at Mr Knott and nodded slightly. Mr Knott's mouth tightened in response. He leaned further over, so that his face was close to hers.

'But how do you know that the place it takes you is the right one?' he said in a lower voice. 'One word in the wrong place, one little mistranslation, and the path leads not to enlightenment, but to madness.'

Hermione looked away. The golden light over London continued to gleam in the background, seemingly falling over the city like a slow, fine rain.

'You're playing around with something potentially very messy,' he went on. His voice was more earnest; there was almost a sort of kindness about it.

'I understand the risk,' she replied, her eyes wide and dark. Mr Knott nodded and stood up to his full height.

'Arthur, if you wouldn't mind,' he said, turning with a flourish to Mr Weasley.

'Perhaps I'll see you at the press conference,' said Mr Weasley to Hermione as he turned away.

'Oh, I don't know if I'm going,' she began, but Mr Weasley was already out of earshot.

She was alone. She began to gather up her papers again, her hands shaking slightly. She glanced once more at the view from the gallery, but the image now seemed flat and unreal. She stood up and hurried away down the echoing metallic steps that connected the galley to the cafeteria below.


	24. The vigilance of Hermione Granger - Ch 2

2\. Public personas

Papers under her arm, Hermione went straight down the corridor that led from the cafeteria, not pausing until she reached the stairs. The stairwell was silent and moodily lit. There was a chill of abandonment about it as she spiralled down and down, three flights to her floor.

The chatter of conversation hit her as soon as the door was open. As she walked up the corridor, Fuchsia Drummond jerked her head around in mid-conversation, her ponytail swishing. _I swear she spends more time out here than in her office_.

'I'll tell you in a minute,' Fuchsia said to her conversation partner, a grey-eyed witch whose name Hermione didn't know, touching her softly on the arm and turning to head off Hermione before she reached her office door.

'Harold wanted to speak to you _before_ the press conference,' she said. _Did she just roll her eyes at me?_ 'I told him I thought you were on a break.'

'I was, but I'm back now,' Hermione replied curtly. 'Did he say what it was about?'

'He wants your memo on legal limits for spider venom in potions.'

She still always submitted her work on time.

'Oh that?' she said, 'It's ready. I'll just drop it into him. I wanted to give it to him this morning.'

'Oh well, that's fine then,' said Fuchsia, her mouth taut as she fingered the file she was holding against her chest.

She swivelled on her heels and went back to the grey-eyed witch, who was continuing to loiter in the corridor. Hermione could feel her watching as she opened her office door.

Delivering the memo to Harold Hawkwell, her boss, took scarcely more than a minute as he was about to head down to some pre-press conference briefing.

'Aren't you going, Hermione?' he asked as he gathered various papers into a portfolio. 'It should be quite a spectacle.'

He was a tall, sober, spindly wizard with grey, side-parted hair, a narrow, ruddy face and almost black eyes. There was still something kindly about the way he spoke to her. _He hasn't quite given up on me_.

'I may well, if I finish my work,' she replied, half-turning back from the door.

When she returned to her office a visitor was standing in front of the door: a tall, rather severe-looking red-headed girl was scrutinising Fuchsia Drummond and her companion through large, black-rimmed glasses which magnified her eyes. Her hair was tied up in a tightly coiled bun and she wore a grey pinstripe suit.

'Come in, Argenta,' said Hermione, smiling at the girl.

'Does she even have an office?' remarked Argenta once they were inside.

'Her name's on the door of one of them at least,' replied Hermione, already ashamed at the disorder in hers. She could never quite keep it under control these days.

'I didn't know she's friends with Lorelei Boykin,' said Argenta, suddenly producing what looked like a newspaper clipping as if from nowhere.

'Is that who she is?' said Hermione. 'I've heard the name. Isn't she one of Myra Tremayne's little helpers?'

'That's right,' said Argenta. 'She was in my year at Hogwarts. Slippery and two-faced.'

When Hermione had developed a sudden interest in witchfinders, she quickly found that she had very few allies within the Ministry.

'_You need to speak to our witchfinder,' Kingsley had told her as he glanced over the collection of photos of anti-wizarding graffiti she had spread across his desk._

'Our _witchfinder?'_

_She must have pulled a face, because he smiled gently at her._

'_Well, not a witchfinder in the strict sense of the term. Shall we say, a witchfinder who finds other kinds of witches.'_

_She hadn't quite felt like smiling. Instead she did her best to screw her face into a serious expression._

'_You mean he's sympathetic to us?'_

'_Insofar as he's sympathetic towards anyone.'_

'_But he works for the Ministry?'_

'_Not exactly. He's a kind of outside contractor. He investigates occurrences of magical activity and pseudo-magical activity around the country and keeps us informed of what he finds. It's mostly pseudo, by the way. And since it mostly turns out to be people playing at being wizards, it's not all that interesting to us.' _

'_How come he knows about us if he's a Muggle?'_

_He had touched her on the arm for a second._

'_Be sure not to use that word around him. He doesn't like it. As I understand it, magic runs in his family. Though he's never been seen to do magic.'_

'_So he's a witchfinder who's actually sort of a real wizard?'_

_He made a gesture like shrugging his shoulders._

'_Like I said, he's sort of a Ministry-approved witchfinder.'_

_She couldn't help smiling at the idea._

'_I have to admit that I don't know that much about him myself,' Kingsley continued, frowning as he read the text on one of her photos. 'I've seen him no more than two or three times at most. And when I did meet him he wasn't very forthcoming. Not the most approachable of people. But anyway, we have a liaison officer. She can give you all the details and introduce you.'_

'_A liaison officer?_

'_Attached to Muggle Relations.'_

'_Who is it?'_

'_Her name's Argenta Coyle. Know her?'_

_For the second time she could feel herself pull a face. Kingsley smiled. _

'_I see you do know her.'_

'How's work?' Hermione asked.

'A low priority, as usual,' Argenta replied.

Despite her rather prickly reputation, Argenta Coyle had always been surprisingly pleasant to Hermione, partly out of guilt, she claimed. _If I'd have had my head screwed on properly that day, Harry Potter would have been found a year earlier_.

Argenta held out the newspaper cutting for her to take. Hermione unfolded the piece of paper and read the title of the article out loud.

'_Suicide attempt on town bridge averted_'

She looked quizzically at Argenta.

'It's the last bit that you'll find most interesting.'

'… _Fortunately, local student Lilly Herrick, who was crossing the bridge at the time, stopped to try and convince the man to come down off the bridge and keep him talking until the emergency services arrived'_.

'Do you reckon it's her?' Argenta asked.

Hermione re-read the article twice in quick succession.

'I think it must be,' she replied trying to control the excitement in her voice.

'If it is her,' said Argenta, 'do you think she was somehow involved in putting the man on the bridge in the first place, or was she actually doing a good deed?'

'You know I think she might have been doing a good deed,' Hermione replied, holding up the newspaper clipping.

'I suppose that was before she had her epiphany and decided that doing bad is good for you?' Argenta replied, pointing at the clipping.

'Could have been,' said Hermione. 'But then again, who knows?'

She re-read the article again, more and more convinced that this was the same Lillian Herrick who was planning to expose wizarding society.

'Can I keep this?' she asked.

'Of course,' said Argenta. 'You hold the file on the Seven-Pointed Circle, not us.'

Hermione folded away the article and put it in the file she had been keeping for the past two years. It consisted mainly of the largely fruitless report she had written on the witchfinders and Lillian Herrick, plus countless other pages of notes on the Seven-Pointed Circle.

'The other thing I wanted to ask you,' Argenta continued, more earnest now, 'is whether I can persuade you to come to this press conference with me.'

'Everyone keeps asking me if I'm going,' Hermione replied.

'Well, it is a major event after all.'

'It is, it's very serious.'

In truth she couldn't see any real reason not to go. The attempted assassination of the Minister of Magic was very serious indeed. When she had heard the news some two weeks earlier, she had scarcely been able to think of anything else, like everyone else, she supposed. But when she had heard that Kingsley Shacklebolt's life was not in danger, and that he would be probably back at work in a few weeks at most, her usual preoccupations had begun to flood her mind again. Suspicion had fallen on the Citadel, a political movement set up to warn wizards of the threat posed by the non-magical world. Instead of seeing muggles as weak and inferior, the Citadel saw the non-magical world as powerful and evermore suspicious of wizards' existence.

'I never thought Tobias Destrument would go this far,' said Argenta.

The Citadel's leader, Gondulph Belhaine, was Tobias Destrument's grandfather. Hermione was still rather ambivalent towards Tobias Destrument, and regarded his sister Enid with downright suspicion, but she had been the one to first sound the alarm about witchfinder activity, and she had given the Citadel its first publicity, before it even had a name. She was tainted by association.

'I know he's in Belhaine's inner circle, but I still can't completely believe that he was involved,' Hermione replied.

Hermione had arranged for Isaac and Argenta to meet Tobias Destrument to discuss Mr Morley and the new vow wizards. A sort of collaboration had grown out of it, one that once again put the Anti-witchfinder Office in a bad light.

'I'd be careful expressing that view round here,' said Argenta, giving Hermione an arch look as she got up and headed for the door. 'Goodness knows what Azkaban is going to do to Tobias's good looks,' she added, glancing round at Hermione from the door.

'Why are they putting the prisoners on display anyway?' said Hermione, half thinking out loud.

When she had heard the announcement, it had struck her as a particularly bad idea, and unlikely to have been Kingsley's.

'It is a crackpot idea,' said Argenta. 'A sign of weakness more than strength.'

'Then why are you going?'

Argenta smirked.

'Like I said, I want to get a last look at Tobias before Azkaban wrecks his looks. So you're not going because you don't approve?'

'That's not the only reason,' Hermione replied, a little hesitation in her voice. _I do have another reason for not wanting to go: I don't want to see Harry there_.

'Don't you want to see how the undersecretaries are behaving while the Minister's out of action?' Argenta continued. Apparently she had taken it on herself not to leave Hermione's office until she had convinced her to come with her.

'Don't say out of action,' Hermione retorted. 'Kingsley's going to be fine.'

'Good,' said Argenta. 'We need him back in charge. So will you come?'

Hermione chewed her lip.

'Well, I suppose if nothing else I should see how the undersecretaries are behaving.'

Argenta started to head for the lifts, but Hermione guided her in the direction of the stairs, which were accessed at the end of the corridor through a small, cramped-looking door. Hermione opened the door and held it open for Argenta, who stepped out rather circumspectly into the stairwell.

'It's perfectly safe,' Hermione remarked, which earned her a look from Argenta.

The Aula was another four floors below Hermione's floor, but still a few floors above Argenta's. They descended the spiralling steps quickly and exited the stairwell via an identical, Alice in Wonderland-type door.

Straight away they were caught up in the flow of wizards and witches passing down the corridor. Up ahead the great doors of the Aula were flung wide, and a stream of people was passing inside.

The Aula was already more than three quarters full but the podium was still empty. High above the empty podium was a large and hitherto opaque portal, which for the time being shimmered darkly. Hermione hesitated and stepped out of the flow of people passing inside the hall and scrambling for seats, pulling Argenta with her as she did.

'Not having second thoughts?' said Argenta. 'Supposedly this is going to be the event of the year.'

'It's not that,' replied Hermione distractedly, scanning the far end of the hall for familiar faces. 'I'd just rather stay at the back.'

Argenta looked at the last rows of seats in front of them. They were filling up rapidly. Just then someone started waving at them from the far end of the very back row.

'It's Caius Hanmer,' Argenta remarked sardonically. 'Sure you want to sit with him?'

'I suppose it can't hurt' Hermione replied.

Caius Hanmer had always maintained that he didn't want to work for the Ministry. But even he relented when Harry himself encouraged him to join the Auror Office. Ron had quietly taken umbrage at this. He hadn't said anything, but she had seen the look of distaste on his face. While Caius still seemed to greet life with a generalised smirk, he had quite happily applied himself to a job at the bottom of the department.

'Didn't think you were coming,' he said, his remark more directed towards Hermione as they sat down in the two free seats next to him.

'Well, I couldn't really miss it,' she replied, with not much conviction.

'You heard they arrested Tobias Destrument?' Caius continued.

'I heard,' said Hermione.

'Did you think they'd get involved in something so deranged as trying to assassinate the Minister of Magic?' said Caius.

'No, I didn't,' Hermione replied.

'He's a bit strange, old Belhaine,' said Caius, 'but I have to admit I never thought he was this dangerous.'

'We don't know how dangerous he really is yet,' said Hermione, 'or whether he actually ordered the assassination. Which is another reason why putting prisoners on display before any sort of trial is not a good idea.'

At this point a man in the row in front of them turned round and stared at them. He was a large, well-built man with receding hair and a black goatee beard. Hermione recognised him as Elias Rathbone from magical maintenance.

'The man orders the assassination of the Minister of Magic and you don't think he's dangerous?'

'We don't yet know for sure that he did,' Hermione replied.

'Ah, you would say that,' the man replied, scowling at her.

The man sitting next to Rathbone, a ruddy-faced, excitable man named Weaver, also turned around and joined in.

'Do you think the Aurors would go all the way to Belgium, roping in the French and the Belgians, and have a massive battle with Belhaine and his cronies if there was nothing in it?' said Weaver, who also worked in magical maintenance. 'One of them nearly got Harry Potter too.'

'I thought you worked in the Auror Office,' said Rathbone, eyeing Caius contemptuously. 'You don't seem to know much about what's been going on.'

'So I heard, one curse was fired,' replied Caius. 'That's hardly a battle. And another thing, Belhaine senior wasn't one of those arrested, or not yet, anyway, even though he was in the house.'

'Wasn't he?' Weaver exclaimed, apparently aghast.

'_Xavier_ Belhaine was arrested,' said Hermione. 'His father wasn't.'

'Well, like he said, not yet anyway,' said Weaver, who seemed slightly deflated. He and Rathbone glared at them and turned away.

'I reckon most people are here just to get a look at the prisoners anyway,' Argenta remarked.

'That's probably true,' replied Caius.

'I suppose it's the next best thing to taking Voldemort alive.'

'That would hardly have been possible,' muttered Hermione.

'Anyway, the rest are here to see how the mice are playing while the cat's away … aha, the show's about to begin,' Argenta continued, lowering her voice to almost a whisper.

The lights went very low and the shimmering portal began to glow and pulse ominously. When the lights came back on the podium was full. To Hermione's surprise, all the top undersecretaries were present: Luther Penhaligon, Undersecretary for Foreign Relations, Myra Tremayne, Undersecretary for National Wizarding Welfare, Mortimer Knott, Harold Hawkwell, even Tadgh O'Dowd, the Undersecretary for Finance, looking stony-faced out at the audience from his seat. _They must all be here because Kingsley's not yet out of hospital_. Then, sitting among the undersecretaries, apparently unphased by the scale of the proceedings, was Harry, there on behalf of the Auror Office in Kingsley's absence. The other end of the podium was taken up by foreign guests of the Ministry, representatives of the French and Belgian Auror offices. The French delegate was none other than Henoc Lutumba. He was in conversation with Mr Godefroid. the Head of the Belgian Aurors, and his rather elegant interpreter, a Miss Dellezelles. Hermione's gaze shifted from the podium party to the front row of the audience, where she could make out a trio of redheads sitting next to each other: Ron, Ginny and their father.

A general hush descended over the crowd as Myra Tremayne stood up and went swiftly to the lectern emblazoned with the official Ministry logo.

'How come they agreed to let her speak first?' Caius whispered.

'Is that supposed to be a sign that she's the Minister's stand-in?' Argenta added.

'She probably has the most support in the Wizengamot,' Hermione replied tersely.

Someone in the row in front turned round and shushed them.

Myra Tremayne swept a wavy lock of silvery blonde out of her eyes, coughed delicately and fixed the audience with a look of confident intensity. In a two-piece cream-coloured suit, overly high heels and perfectly (and presumably magically) undulating hair, she was a glamorous, but highly un-witchlike presence in the Ministry. The only obvious sign that she had anything to do with wizardry was the jagged silver necklace she wore, which had at its centre a diamond-encrusted rendering of the Gryffindor lion. She was (as far as Hermione had heard) somewhere in her late thirties; certainly her face was youthful, her complexion bright, her eyes brilliant blue. Only her nose was a little long and her chin too pointed. She was known to be Muggle-born, for which she and her family had been tortured by Death Eaters. The cynics in the Ministry claimed her rapid rise was the result of her status as a kind of Muggle-born semi-martyr.

In previous years, Hermione had earned comparisons with Myra Tremayne, with them both being seen as Muggle-born high flyers. _Not anymore_. That was at least one reason for Hermione to be grateful.

'First of all,' she began, her voice tremulous with concern, 'I want to bring you the good news that our Minister of Magic is recovering well and should leave hospital in a few days.'

It was well known that the curse intended to assassinate Kingsley Shacklebolt had fortunately not done him any lasting damage.

'_So make the most of your time at the top while you can_,' Argenta muttered, her gaze fixed on Myra Tremayne.

'Secondly I can confirm that the conspirators responsible for the attempt on the Minister's life are under arrest and have already been transferred to Prison A1, where they have joined Silas Lashburn, the would-be assassin...'

'_Why don't they just call it Azkaban_?' Caius whispered.

'... Thanks to very efficient cooperation with the French and Belgian auror offices, who I'm very pleased to say are represented here this afternoon, the threat to the Ministry has officially been brought to an end.'

'_It's been rebranded_,' Argenta replied, also in a whisper.

'... The Auror Office will give you the full details in just a moment, but what I can tell you is that the conspiracy seems to have gone right to the top of the so-called Citadel movement. As a result, some key members of its political leadership are among those under arrest. However, contrary to certain rumours, Gondulph Belhaine was not one of those arrested.

Before I hand over to my colleagues, I'd like to state very clearly that the Citadel movement has not been banned. We believe in freedom of speech and acknowledge its members' right to express their political views. This is the express wish of the Minister of Magic himself. As for myself, all of you know that I have strong reasons for disagreeing with Gondulph Belhaine. No one knows better than me that non-magical people are no threat to wizarding society. What's more, I know only too well what happened the last time wizards set themselves in enmity against non-wizards. But the nature of the allegations against the inner circle of the Citadel movement raises the spectre of something deeply worrying in our society: the spectre of political violence. And so I would urge every one of us to ask ourselves whether we want to allow this back into our society.

I must also reiterate that the decisions of the Wizengamot on nominations for the post of Minister of Magic are the result of exacting deliberation by the most learned and experienced instance in wizarding society. We have such a body precisely so that our society cannot be ruled by the whims of one person.

So the lesson for all of us is this: no to political violence, no to secret paramilitary organisations, no to defiance of the decisions of our most senior and trusted stewards, no to retribution and no to intolerance!'

Applause quickly broke out in sections of the audience then spread throughout the hall. Myra Tremayne stepped down from the lectern and walked back across the stage. She stopped next to Harry, put her hand on his shoulder and beckoned for him to take the floor.

'Harry Potter over Luther Penhaligon?' Argenta remarked. 'Is she buttering up the Auror Office or something?'

_He did lead the operation to capture them_, Hermione thought to herself. But she said nothing.

'On the other hand,' Caius replied, 'maybe she's hoping Harry will be overshadowed by her inspiring speech.'

Harry sauntered across the stage and installed himself at the lectern. Three years had passed since his disappearance and two years since his return, and any allegations about him had long faded. His long-term partner Ginny Weasley was present in the first row of the audience; there was no doubt they made a charming couple. The candid interview that Harry had given to _The Daily Prophet_ on his return had done the trick, making him the subject of sympathy for the terrible accident with a stray memory charm, coupled with great relief that the Chosen One was back and well again. Despite some misgivings, the Weasley family had played their part to the full in corroborating the story that Hermione had concocted on the way back to the Burrow. Since then, Harry Potter's rise at the Ministry had been the most natural thing in the world.

'I'm not going to go into too much detail about the ins and outs of the operation,' he began, looking out calmly over the assembled audience, his eyes sharp and his voice warm and assured. 'All I want to say is that our job was made much easier thanks to the cooperation of our French and Belgian counterparts, who are represented here on the podium today.'

At that point he gave a quick salute in the direction of Henoc Lutumba and Mr Godefroid.

'What basically happened was that last night a combined team of French Aurors and Belgian Aurors and our own Auror Office raided a house in the port district of Ostend. Henoc Lutumba, who is with us here today, coordinated the French Auror team, while Mr Godefroid, the head of Belgium's Union Royale des Sorciers, provided us with the logistics and local intelligence to make the operation a success. So I'd like to thank them straight away for their contribution.'

Dashing as ever, Henoc Lutumba smiled to the crowd, while Mr Godefroid proffered the briefest of nods. Mr Godefroid was a small man with jet-black hair and a severe moustache. He listened as his interpreter, a tall, smartly dressed blonde woman, whispered in his ear. From time to time he turned to Henoc to whisper something to him.

The crowd was quiet. Harry seemed to command their rapt attention.

'As you probably know, Silas Lashburn was arrested in London three days ago. And as you probably also know, Silas Lashburn is a member of the Citadel political movement. This didn't lead us to automatically conclude that the political leadership of the movement was involved. But after questioning Silas Lashburn, it became clear that there was some sort of involvement, or coordination from the top, so we obviously needed to question some of the leaders of Citadel. But they were all mysteriously gone from London and, as it turned out, had even left the country. At this point we received intelligence that the party leadership had gathered in Ostend in a house that belonged to the Belhaine family. Last night, after watching the house for over 24 hours, we went in. After a brief altercation, six people were arrested and are now being held in Azkaban.'

'See, Harry still calls it Azkaban,' remarked Caius.

'Do you think that was a dig at Myra Tremayne?' asked Argenta.

'I don't think Harry plays that kind of game,' said Caius.

Hermione was grateful to Caius for making it unnecessary for her to speak. Even in front of Argenta. As for Caius himself, she didn't know what he thought about her and Harry. He had never asked her and she didn't want to bring up the subject herself.

'Maybe, but all the others do,' Argenta replied. 'Though I admit, I want to believe that he's not going to get tainted.'

_He won't_.

'That's really all I wanted to say,' Harry continued, a distracted tone slipping into his voice. 'For the rest of the proceedings, I hand you back to my colleagues.'

He stepped quickly down from the lectern and went back to his seat, choosing a route that took him across the back of the stage. This time it was Luther Penhaligon who crossed the stage, swinging his wand in his hand as he strode to the lectern. He was a tall, massive figure of almost Hagrid-like proportions, bald with a red beard and probing blue eyes.

'It's a shame that the Minister has ended up with these people around him,' Argenta remarked. 'Excepting Harry Potter of course.'

'Kingsley didn't have much choice,' whispered Hermione in reply.

Rathbone and Weaver both turned around again, casting suspicious glances at both Hermione and Argenta. Hermione subtly elbowed Argenta, who seemingly ignored her. _It's impressive how little she seems to care about her career prospects_. _Or possibly even her safety_.

It was true that Kingsley didn't have a choice. The current undersecretaries had never been close to him in the old days. Most of his best and closest advisers had died defending Hogwarts. And even if he had been able to appoint them, he would have faced accusations of cronyism from every quarter. The defeat of Voldemort had also resulted in the purging of large numbers of Ministry officials who had collaborated too eagerly with the Death Eaters. Even Hermione had to admit that some of the collaborators had been competent officials. And in the rebuilding after the fall of Voldemort, those who had refused to serve Voldemort had to be seen to be rewarded. People like Knott, Penhaligon and Harold Hawkwell couldn't have been passed over in the reorganisation of the Ministry. And Hermione had to acknowledge that they were intelligent men, competent managers and had all genuinely opposed Voldemort. They could hardly be criticised for wanting their merits to be recognised.

'Anyway,' said Argenta in a suddenly much louder voice. 'I hope they do make Harry Potter the next Minister of Magic.' Hermione almost laughed out loud.

_I don't. But half the Ministry thinks it's a done deal._

'You all know about the Ministry's policy on transparency,' Penhaligon began in his brusque, quasi-military style. 'I suppose you might say that the portal high above us is the physical embodiment of that policy. The six prisoners arrested last night in Belgium are, as you've all heard, high-ranking members of the Citadel. You may have seen some of their faces before, sharing a platform with their leader and mentor, Gondulph Belhaine, promoting the ideals of that movement. Ideals that are, if you'll permit me to speak frankly, appeals to insularity, fear and suspicion. Gondulph Belhaine sought election as Minister of Magic in the name of those ideals. His underlying idea is that wizards and Muggles should not mix, that Muggles are a threat to wizards. Unsurprisingly, his manifesto found scant support. Having failed at the ballot box, it would seem that his party has resorted to violence. So remember, when you see the faces of the prisoners on the screen, among which are those who just last night attacked the Aurors sent to question them, remember that they purport to be politicians. And more than that, remember what values they represent.'

_Why are they doing this? Can it really be to quieten the rumours?_ There had been whispers that the threat had been exaggerated, and even that the assassination attempt had been staged as a publicity stunt for the Auror Office to justify its status as first among equals within the Ministry. No matter what Hermione's opinion of Citadel was, the idea that the attack had been faked struck her as ludicrous. The attack on Kingsley had been real, of that she was sure. The only question was whether the conspiracy went all the way to the top. But what was the Ministry doing? Could it really be parading prisoners before the public just to counter a conspiracy theory?

Hermione watched as Luther Penhaligon raised his broad arm into the air and pointed his wand at the portal. The audience had gone silent.

'Now the show's really going to begin,' muttered Caius.

The portal shimmered again, and this time a grey light began to emanate from it. The portal grew gradually less opaque until a series of silhouettes could be made out. Finally, the figures came into view, dressed in the familiar uniform worn by the inmates of Azkaban, and framed by the black walls of a cell. Tobias Destrument was indeed among them. He looked paler than usual and had a rather haunted look, even though the Dementors had been kept under tighter rein since the Battle of Hogwarts. Hermione also recognised Xavier Belhaine. He looked unaffected, defiant even. The other prisoners were only vaguely familiar to her, from the pages of _The Daily Prophet_ or possibly from Citadel's own publication, _The Night Watch_. As she scanned their faces, she noticed that Tobias Destrument's sister was not among them. _How typical that she would escape_. Now Myra Tremayne began to read out their names, her voice heavy with pathos.

'Xavier Belhaine, Tobias Destrument, Antonin Martell, Stanislas Pizzuoli, Edmund Glimlatch, Eustace Toussaint.'

'The prisoners will be released on bail quite soon,' continued Penhaligon. 'But given the seriousness of the crime that has been committed, a crime committed quite openly by one of the members of their organisation, it was deemed appropriate that the world should see these men and what they've sunk to.'

'There will be no need to release them,' said a new voice. The audience looked around to see where it came from. The next moment a thin, slight man in his sixties with a shaven, slightly shrunken head and dressed in a dark green suit, appeared at the far end of the stage. _Belhaine himself_. He walked slowly across the stage towards the wizards gathered there, leaning on a cane as he went.

'The prisoners refuse bail,' said the man. 'They will remain where you have put them.'

'They admit their guilt, then, do they?' said Myra Tremayne.

'Certainly not,' said the man. 'They are innocent. They are political prisoners.'

The man turned suddenly on his heels to face the audience and smiled. 'What a fine turn-out,' he said in a dry, creaking voice. Then he turned again to the wizards on the stage. 'And such an esteemed podium party. I hope the Ministry doesn't mind this intrusion. But in situations like this, I believe that both sides of the story need to be heard.'

As he spoke, a pained expression darted across his face.

'I hardly think this is the time for attempts at justification,' said Penhaligon.

'Oh I don't expect to convince the likes of you, Undersecretary,' Belhaine replied. 'My friends are quite resigned to the fact that they won't be acquitted today, or any day soon. But eventually they will leave Azkaban, and I don't mean on bail. The Ostend six will be acquitted,' he continued, coughing slightly as he did. 'My reputation, and that of my political movement, will be restored.'

'Just out of curiosity,' said Harry, standing up and walking towards Belhaine, 'after all this isn't a trial, are you claiming that Silas Lashburn wasn't a member of your organisation?'

'Mr Potter,' said Belhaine, bowing to him with a wheeze, 'so nice to see you in particular. No, Silas Lashburn was and is a member of Citadel. You have his declaration of allegiance, I believe, and you didn't even forge it. But he acted alone. Or if he was acting under anyone's orders, those orders weren't mine or of anyone else in the political leadership of our party. After all, I have the most to lose out of this whole affair. My movement's reputation has been smeared, and my closest colleagues and family members are in Azkaban, now supposedly high-security prisoners. The Minister, on the other hand, has barely a scratch on him, and his beloved Auror Office has collected the plaudits for a successful mission against what is supposed to be the greatest threat to wizards since Voldemort himself! Judge for yourselves, ladies and gentlemen, who has the most to gain!'

Whispering broke out all around the audience. Undersecretary Penhaligon smiled stiffly at Belhaine.

'This will all be examined in full during the trial, Belhaine,' he replied, his voice sonorous and authoritative. 'There will be full disclosure of the Ministry's activities, and of yours. But I suggest that you take care of what you say here today. There may yet be more arrests.'

Belhaine smiled grimly.

'I look forward to that trial as much as you, Undersecretary,' he croaked. 'I only hope we see the day when it begins.'

'Your people will get a fair trial, as you well know,' replied Penhaligon.

'You misunderstand me,' replied Belhaine. 'What I mean is this: my information is that the Ministry won't last long enough to bring this matter to trial.'

The whispering rose to a louder level.

'Do you still intend to bring down the Ministry, Belhaine?'

The question came from Mortimer Knott, who was on his feet.

'Not I,' replied Belhaine. 'I'm sorry to have to break this to you, Mr Knott. Since you're the Head of Muggle Affairs I thought you might have known this yourself: the wolves are at the door, and they're not wielding wands. They will come with guns, helicopters and television cameras. We can go on fighting among ourselves, or we can join forces and face the threat that is nearly upon us.'

Heads began to turn in the row in front of Hermione and Argenta. Hermione caught a number of smirking looks directed at her. Her only response was to look away, focusing her gaze on the podium.

'If you have specific information that is backed up with hard evidence,' said Myra Tremayne, 'then the Ministry will look into it.'

Belhaine smiled weakly.

'Ah, if only I had such evidence, Undersecretary,' he said. A rumble of noise rippled around the crowd, and a voice from the row in front of Hermione was heard to say _what a surpris_e.

Another voice laughed softly in front of them, then added in a voice that was intentionally loud enough to hear:

'_Perhaps Hermione Granger can file another report_.'

'As far as I can see,' Myra Tremayne replied, 'you came here mainly to repeat your old political slogans. I rather wonder why you bothered. The slogans never won you many supporters in the past, and they're hardly likely to now.'

Belhaine grinned bleakly at Myra Tremayne through thin, dry lips.

'If that is the case, Undersecretary, then I have nothing left to do but place myself at the Ministry's pleasure.'

For a moment Myra Tremayne looked at Belhaine with her eyes wide open. Then her eyes narrowed again.

'If you'll oblige us with a confession,' she replied in a low, slightly uncertain voice, 'then we can arrange something for you.'

'It's not a question of confession,' Belhaine replied. 'My conscience is clear. Look at it if you like as a sentimental request from an elderly man. An old man who would like to be reunited with his son and grandson. Even if that means going to prison. Will you oblige me?'

'Only if you confess your involvement,' replied Myra Tremayne quickly, apparently losing patience. 'Prison A1 is not a hotel.'

'Very well,' said Belhaine, his face expressionless. 'If you refuse to send me down, I will do it myself.'

In an instant his wand was in his hand and an incantation on his lips. Aurors began to rush the stage, but they recoiled instinctively as a Dementor was suddenly conjured between Belhaine and the podium party, a baleful air descending in an instant throughout the audience. The Dementor leaned towards Belhaine, its tattered cloak seeming to wrap itself around the man's arm.

'I leave for Azkaban!' Belhaine shouted, his face white and a grimace on his lips. 'And I will stay there until the innocent are cleared!' The next instant a thick dark cloud swirled around Belhaine and the Dementor, the old man almost enveloped by the creature's embrace.

As soon as they were gone, the customary feeling of dread the Dementor had brought with it faded away. But the palpable air of shock remained.

'Look up there!' someone shouted from the audience. Everyone looked around and up at the portal still hanging high above them. The image reformed itself: there were now seven figures on the screen. Belhaine had indeed joined his comrades. Luther Penhaligon strode back across the stage, raised his wand and extinguished the image. The portal immediately went black.

'I believe this press conference has come to an end,' he said, in a quieter voice.

Hermione was one of the first out of the Aula. She paused in the corridor, waiting for Argenta and Caius to catch her up. Witches and wizards began to stream past her, and she could swear she received a few dirty looks from some of those that passed by. But before Argenta and Caius appeared, Hermione found herself face to face with Rathbone and Weaver again. They placed themselves between her and the passing crowd, forcing her back against the corridor wall.

'So the wolves are at the door, are they?' said Elias Rathbone, grinning sarcastically.

'So Belhaine claims,' Hermione replied coolly.

'I thought that was what you claimed was going to happen,' added Weaver. 'The witchfinders are on their way to bring down the walls, or something like that, wasn't it?'

'I don't have to justify myself to you,' Hermione replied. 'I received an explicit warning that something was being prepared. I simply brought it to the attention of the Ministry.'

'And do you still stick by it after all this time?' Rathbone remarked.

'Even if it hasn't happened yet, who's to say it won't?' said Hermione.

'If you hadn't noticed,' said Weaver, 'we're in the middle of a real crisis here. There's a real threat against the Ministry, and it comes from wizards, not from Muggles.'

Suddenly Caius barged in front of the wizards.

'What's your problem, boys?' he said, advancing towards them.

'The problem's people like you,' said Rathbone. 'You've been seen hanging around these Citadel people too.'

'I'm not a member of their organisation,' Caius retorted.

'Yeah, but you're the sort of person who says things like _oh but they've got a point_.'

'When have I ever said that?' Caius exclaimed. 'I don't agree with their politics at all.'

'Yeah come off it,' added Argenta, now at Hermione's side. 'It's one thing to say that there's a specific threat against us and another altogether to actually buy into Citadel's agenda.'

'Ah yes, another one of them,' said Weaver. 'I knew you'd be in on this witchfinder business. You'd be out of a job otherwise.'

'Speaking of jobs,' added Rathbone, pointing his thumb in Caius's general direction, his voice shot through with contempt, 'who ever gave this one a job in the Auror Office? Imagine that: a Slytherin Auror.'

'What is it to you?' Hermione exclaimed, the anger that had frozen her a few moments earlier suddenly heating up. 'You should concentrate on your job, whatever that might be, and let him do his. And by the way, I bet he's a much better Auror than you would ever be.'

Rathbone laughed and turned to his companion.

'What a pathetic little group,' he remarked.

'You're right,' replied Weaver. 'Still, the good news is that with these arrests the Ministry is starting to do something about the lunatic fringe.'

'That's true enough,' Rathbone replied, looking pointedly at Hermione and Argenta. 'But in my opinion they haven't gone far enough yet.'

'Say one more word and you'll regret it,' hissed Argenta, her wand suddenly pointing at Rathbone's chest.

'What do you think you're doing?' came another voice. Luther Penhaligon was standing in the doorway of the Aula. Harry was standing next to him.

'Is this the appropriate time for this sort of behaviour?' he boomed, glaring at both Argenta and Rathbone. 'Kindly lower your wand. We have a crisis on our hands.'

Argenta looked warily at the Undersecretary and lowered her wand. Then her gaze shifted to Harry. There was a hint of contempt in her look of incomprehension, which Harry obviously saw. He in turn looked at Hermione, who looked back at him, almost despairingly.

'Maybe you can talk some sense into her,' said Rathbone, addressing Harry. Harry examined Rathbone cooly, his mouth screwed up and pensive.

'Why do you say that?'

Rathbone smiled grimly.

'Had enough of her too, have you?'

'I don't think it's any of your business.'

His gaze flashed back to her for an instant. She thought she understood his expression.

Now Ron emerged from the Aula, staring at the curious standoff in the corridor.

'What's going on?' he said, his question half directed at Harry, half at Hermione.

'It's nothing,' said Harry, glancing again at Hermione before looking back at Ron. 'Everyone's a bit stressed out. It's normal in the circumstances.'


	25. The vigilance of Hermione Granger - Ch 3

3\. The Seven of Sie

Iona Deasy kneeled in front of her bed and silently eased open the drawer beneath it. It was early evening and the only light in her bedroom came from her bedside lamp, casting a dim, grey-blue light across her features. Slowly she reached inside the drawer, trying not to disturb the jumble of objects and keepsakes that lay there. At the back of the drawer, under a bulky photograph album, lay a long, thin package wrapped in a dark velvet cloth. Laying the photograph album to one side, she took out the package and unwrapped it quickly, her fingers trembling just a little. Inside the velvet wrapping lay a wand, an intricately carved wooden wand that had never done magic before her eyes, though she felt certain it was capable of it. She pressed an unruly lock of her long, pale blonde hair behind her ear and ran her finger along the undulating, indented surface of the wand. There was nothing to be seen that she hadn't seen before a hundred times, but as she reached the end of its length she felt her finger recoil, as if the object had an electrical charge in it. She put the covering back over the wand and slipped it into the side pocket of the overnight bag she had placed behind the door in case her mother came in and disturbed her.

As she was packing, a light seemed to flash outside the window. She lifted the curtain and looked out into the street. For a second she thought she saw a slender figure dressed in black standing beneath a street light opposite the house. But the next moment the figure was gone, so she let the curtain drop.

She reached up and took down her coat from where it was hanging on the back of her bedroom door and hurriedly put it on. A letter written to her parents accounting for her absence had already been tucked into the top drawer of her writing desk. With one last glance around what had been her bedroom since the age of seven, she picked up her bag and went out onto the landing.

Her parents were in the front room watching television as she slipped quietly down the stairs.

'I'm just going round to Claire's to study,' she called out as she passed in the hall.

'Ok,' came her mother's reply over the sound of the television.

She opened the front door and stepped out into the evening. There on the doorstep, barring her way, was a cat with silver fur. From its position on the doormat, the cat looked up at her with a withering stare. Iona leaned down to stroke him on the top of his head. He allowed her to stroke him once then pulled his head away. She stood up and he shifted his position slightly, so that he was still blocking her way.

'Don't be like that,' she said in a sad voice. 'You've seen magic. Now it's my turn. Let me go. I'll come back for you.'

The cat looked up at her again, its pupils dilated. Then it bit her leg. The bite didn't penetrate her jeans, but she let out a little yelp of surprise. She quickly composed herself, telling herself that it was beneath her to be so disconcerted by a cat, and strode off down the garden path. The cat immediately set off too, padding along at her side.

'Spectre, get back to the house!' she said in a low, chiding voice. As she paused to open the front gate he reared up and bit her again.

'Ouch!' she whispered, turning in the opening. 'It's too late, do you understand me? Too late.'

Spectre made no response. In a way she was pleased that he was making such a fuss over her departure.

'I'll give you one last chance,' she said finally, reaching into her bag and drawing out the wand. 'If you want me to stay, lead me to the owner of this wand, just like you led me to the wand itself.'

In response, Spectre got up slowly and slunk back up the garden path, before disappearing into a flower bed. Iona stared at the spot where he had disappeared. Once she was sure he wouldn't return, she closed the gate and stepped onto the street.

No sooner was she out on the pavement than a dark arm swished out of the dark and locked itself insistently in hers. She let out a mute cry, caught between fear of the arm that grabbed her and fear of drawing attention to herself.

She glanced down. The hand gripping her arm was slim and pale, with sculpted nails and two silver rings, transparent nail polish glinting off the streetlight.

'Keep quiet or go home,' said the voice that obviously went with the hand. She looked around at the speaker. The face she found herself looking at was half-hidden by a sweep of long black hair. The heavily made-up eye that was scrutinising her was poised between brown and green, the eyelid silver, mascara glistening. With her free hand the girl tugged her hair out of the rest of her face. The visible part of her face showed her to be pretty, and scarcely any older than Iona. The visible eye and half mouth had a jaded, distant look about them.

'Are you one of the Seven?' she asked excitedly.

'Let's not discuss that here,' said the girl, leading her down the lane, her arm firmly grasping hers, in the direction that went away from town and out into the countryside. They followed the lane until the pavement ran out. Beyond the tall hedge that ran along the lane, the floodlit ruins of a castle started to come into sight.

The girl paused and glanced back over her shoulder down the lane. Satisfied that they were far enough on from the last house, she turned around, her gaze cold and piercing.

'This is your last chance to change your mind,' she said, looking closely at Iona.

'I've made up my mind,' Iona replied. 'This is what I want.'

'What's that I wonder?' said the girl.

'I want to do what you can do.'

'Why?'

'Because I found this,' replied Iona. 'And since then I can't get it out of my mind.' As she spoke she drew the wand out of her bag and held it out under the moonlight. The dark-haired girl pursed her lips as she looked at the wand.

'What makes you think it's real?'

'Lillian says it's real.'

'You may not have understood her true meaning.'

'Maybe, but I know it's real. I just know. I've known it since I first found it.'

The girl looked up from the wand and up at Iona's face, which was still fixed on it.

'You're still at school I suppose,' she said in a matter-of-fact way.

'I'm dropping out.'

'So did I.'

Iona looked at the girl, who shot her a bitter sort of a smile in return.

'What's your name?' said Iona.

'Later,' said the girl.

'Do you regret choosing this life?' said Iona.

The girl smiled bitterly.

'No, there's no question of that.'

Iona looked up and down the deserted lane.

'So where are we going?'

'Oh it's not far.'

She tugged on her arm, and they continued on their way. The lane started to climb, passing to the side of the hill beneath the castle precincts.

'Not far from here?' said Iona. Had all of them come to her insignificant little town to test her?

'Look closely,' said the girl, casting her hand out in the darkness in front of them. 'Can you see the joins?'

Iona looked down at the cracked tarmac beneath their feet then at the dark countryside on either side of them. She had walked that lane a thousand times but it was less familiar in the dark. She strained her neck to the left, something striking her about the trees overhanging the road there.

'I don't remember there being fir trees here.'

She looked along the road, which continued into the darkness, the streetlights more distanced from one another, forming a dwindling line that seemed to lead upwards. When she looked back down the lane she could still make out the ghostly shape of the castle's northernmost battlements and beyond it, her town's faint lights.

'It's this way,' said the girl suddenly out of the darkness, throwing out her hand. A gravel track led off the road to the left, leading upwards into a forest of firs. A forest that didn't grow by the lane she knew.

The house only came into view once the track emerged from under the trees. Hemmed in by woodland, it stood side on to a small opening where mud and debris were reclaiming what might once have been a driveway. No light shone in its windows. Its walls, as far as they could be seen, were peeling and dilapidated.

'This isn't anywhere near my house,' said Iona.

'No, it's a long way away from there,' said the girl.

She nonchalantly pushed open the door and led Iona into a long and narrow hallway. Without the light scarcely any of it could be seen, other than the faint outline of the corners where the walls met the ceiling. Suddenly the walls seemed to glow with a pale and weak light that seemed to emit from nowhere, as no lamps were lit. As they progressed down the hall, the illumination followed them, as if they themselves were the source of the light.

They passed through a left-hand door, through a seemingly abandoned kitchen to a staircase that led downwards.

'Scared yet?' asked the girl with a smirk.

'No.'

'You're lying. You'll need to get better at that.'

Torches lined the walls of the basement. The room was perfectly round and apparently devoid of any furnishing.

'Nice touch,' said the girl. It wasn't clear whether she was talking to herself or to someone unseen. She led Iona to the middle of the room and paused.

'I've brought her,' she said in a louder voice, the words reverberating off the smooth dark walls.

The next moment they were no longer alone. As Iona glanced about her, figure after figure appeared in the torchlight. Within a few moments they were no longer two but six. Three of the new arrivals were men: two tall, one particularly so, the third smaller and of slighter build. The fourth figure was that of a girl, petite, with black hair and vaguely Asian features. The four figures kept their distance, standing at even intervals around them, watching silently, the light flickering on their impassive faces.

'Stand here in the centre,' said the girl who had brought Iona. 'She'll be here in a moment. Then we'll begin.'

With that, she walked away and took her station in the circle that had formed around Iona.

'She likes them young I see,' said one of the men, the tallest of them. He had ironic eyes, a grinning mouth with rather pointed teeth and a shaven, dome-shaped head.

'Young or not, what matters is how good she is,' said the other tall man. He was slim and handsome, with cropped blonde hair and glasses that seemed to hide his eyes.

'Lillian must have seen something special in her,' the first man continued.

Iona looked impassively back at the man. It was to be expected that they would distrust her, mock her even.

'She will have done,' cut in the girl who had brought her. She said no more and continued to look at Iona with the same distant stare, but Iona was grateful to her for it.

'Why do you carry a wand with you?' asked the third man. Like the girl, he also seemed scarcely older than Iona, only he had a straggly dark brown beard. His expression was not so much distant as altogether vacant.

'She found it,' said the girl, tilting her head towards the bearded youth. Her voice was gentler as it addressed him. 'It's what brought her to us.'

'It's a sad thing,' said the bearded youth. 'Abandoned by its owner.'

'What use are magic wands?' said the shaven-headed man with contempt.

'You wouldn't say that if you knew how to wield one,' said the blonde man.

'I have no need for that kind of magic,' the shaven-headed man retorted. 'Any idiot can be born with it, use it like an idiot, and eventually die, without ever knowing the first thing about the power they wielded. The Circle, on the other hand, requires intelligence and diligence and near endless patience to wield. We can wipe the smile off a wizard's face, then put it back without their ever knowing.'

'Yes, wizards are human beings, which makes them as vulnerable as anyone else,' interjected the Asian girl.

'We can take the wands out of a wizard's hand and make him turn it on himself. So what?' said the dark-haired girl.

'They think they wield incredible power,' said the shaven-headed man. 'But I see them for what they are.'

'By now you should have unlearned believing what you see,' said the girl, looking straight ahead.

'That's true, Rachel,' said another voice, one that was still hidden from them. Iona knew the voice. It was the voice of her teacher.

Lillian Herrick walked slowly into the room, no longer the neat, friendly school teacher Iona had known. She wore a long green dress and her hair was tied back, accentuating her pale face. No one could look away from her. She looked more beautiful than Iona imagined she could be and emanated a power that she had never felt before in her. She smiled at Iona as she walked towards her, and her nerves melted away. The task before her had never seemed simpler. She would make her teacher proud.

She took Iona's arm, guiding her round so that they were facing the assembled company together. She smiled discreetly at Iona then turned to address the gathering.

'We've been only six for too long now,' she said in a voice that was soft enough to be intimate, but loud enough to be heard by the entire company. 'Caleb is lost,' she continued, looking in particular at the girl called Rachel and the bearded boy next to her. 'He remains true to us; of that I'm sure. But he can't help us any more from wherever it is he's wandering. We need a seventh.'

She turned to Iona, placing her hand on the back of Iona's neck and running her fingers through her hair, and tilting Iona's head slightly so that she was looking directly into her eyes.

'After tonight we may have one.'

Iona maintained her gaze. Lilian moved her hand from Iona's neck to her face and touched her gently on the cheek.

'But first,' she said in a soft voice, taking her by the hand, 'before we know for certain, we need to hear the result of your studies, Iona.'

There was silence around the room.

'Are you ready?'

Iona nodded.

'Describe to us the Circle,' said Lillian, pressing the tips of her fingers into Iona's arm.

She began to speak in a clear voice.

'There are seven points on the circle, seven spokes on the wheel. There are seven circles, one within the other. '

The faces around the room were solemn, half immersed in darkness.

'Name them,' said Lillian, in little more than a whisper.

'The first, the outer circle, is the disguising of objects.

The second is the movement of objects.

The third is the making and unmaking of objects.

The fourth is the seeing into the mind of another.

The fifth is the creation of images in the mind of another.

The sixth is the insertion of real objects into another's reality.

In the seventh we walk through time and space, we walk beneath the red sky.'

She took a deep breath and stopped. The room remained silent. Her hand and lower arm felt cold and almost numb from where Lillian was squeezing it.

'Good,' she said. 'Now tell us how you gain access to the gifts.'

Iona glanced at Lillian for a second. The woman stood very close to her, watching her intently.

'You must make the circle turn. First the outer circle then the circles within it, moving inwards.

Each has its own incantation, seven words long. It must be repeated endlessly in sequences of seven, until the gift reveals itself. You never know when exactly, only that the gift always comes at a multiple of seven. But the more you practise, the more complete the dedication, they come sooner and sooner.'

'You say the gifts reveal themselves one by one,' said Lillian, speaking to her softly, as if there was no one else in the room. 'Do you mean that they're mastered one at a time, starting in the outer circles and gradually moving inwards?'

There was a short silence.

'No,' Iona replied calmly. 'Only when you reach the seventh can you attain the preceding six. The seventh is the first, the first is the seventh.'

'And what else?' Lillian asked, her voice lower. 'These are the techniques. But what other preparation must you first make? How must you prepare your mind and spirit?'

'Through guilt,' said Iona softly. 'Guilt is the force that drives the circle on. To unlock the gifts, you must corrupt yourself in full sight of purity. Be wrong in full sight of what is right. And never forgive yourself.'

'And what is its purpose?'

'The purpose?' replied Iona breathlessly. 'The purpose is decided by the practitioner. The original purpose was lost, if there ever was one.'

'I'm proud of you,' whispered Lilian gently to her. Again she turned to address the gathering.

'Each of you knows all too well what it takes to get as far as Iona has. You don't just borrow a book from the library and learn the lore by rote. But before we can accept Iona among us and close the circle around ourselves, we must have a demonstration. Then once again we will be the Seven of Sie'

She smiled at Iona, a smile Iona couldn't help but return. Lilian stepped back, leaving Iona alone in the centre of the room. She glanced around her, while the others looked on with grave faces, in anticipation of the demonstration. Then she closed her eyes, her lips moving rapidly but almost imperceptibly as she began the incantations. The circles rotated, on and on, until the darkness behind her closed eyelids took on form, colour and depth.

First they saw the night sky over a forest. Then the scene reconfigured within a copse of trees, where a woman in black stood in composed silence. After a few moments, there was a rustle of leaves and a cracking of twigs and a teenaged boy stepped warily into the glade. He had a pale, almost feminine face, partly covered by a long mop of side-parted dark brown hair. When he saw that someone was already standing under the trees, he stopped in his tracks.

The woman before him was perhaps in her thirties, with wild, straggly auburn hair. She was tall and thin, and her cheeks were sunken and pale.

'Did you come here looking for someone else?' she asked, looking at him with searching eyes.

'I come here alone usually,' he replied, a note of sullen defiance in his voice.

'Yes, you are usually alone,' replied the woman. 'Do you know who I am?'

'No,' he replied.

'In that case let me show you something, it might help you to understand.' From her black coat she drew out a small, carved wooden wand and held it up for him to see.

'Where did you get that?' said Simon Edwards, a touch of alarm in his voice.

'It's mine,' replied the woman breezily. 'I took it back from the girl who was keeping it. I am its rightful owner.'

His eyes widened in fear.

'You're the witch who left it here years ago?'

The witch smiled and said nothing.

'Where's Iona?' Simon blurted out.

'She's not here,' said the witch, a smirk on her lips. 'She always wanted to solve the mystery behind this wand. She always believed it to be a genuine magic wand, and that someday she would find its owner, the one who abandoned it. And finally she got her wish. She's with me now. It was a moment of great vindication for her. You, on the other hand, always tried to persuade her that it was an object without any power, nothing more than a joke shop replica.'

'I had a duty not to reveal the secrets of that wand,' replied Simon defiantly. 'But what do you mean, she's with you? If anything's happened to her, you'll have me and my people to deal with.'

'You mean deal with me and then wipe Iona's memory, so she's blissfully unaware of the truth again, I suppose. But however touching your concern for her may be, there's no need to get so uptight. She's in no danger. She joined me of her own free will. All I did was explain to her why I abandoned my wand and cloak here that day, why I turned my back on _your_ magic, on wands like this one and the little conjuring tricks you can do with them. Why I gave up on innate magic, in favour of a better, stronger method.'

'If you gave up on magic you won't be needing that,' he replied.

'You're right. I don't. Now I have access to another kind of power, one that's open not just to those who can wield a wand because of fate or their genes. And this power is more potent and more subtle than your magic. Iona was very interested in what I had to say.'

Simon Edwards stared at her and said nothing.

'She's not very pleased with you, by the way,' said the witch. 'Hiding your abilities from her, guarding your precious magic when you knew how much she longed to know the truth.'

His face went pale.

'For years I've wanted to tell her,' he began with a faltering voice. 'But I'm under an oath to keep the wizarding world secret. That oath binds you too, even if you've given up on magic … I've come close to telling her a thousand times. But I thought it would change things between us. I didn't …'

'You were scared she would be jealous of you and your powers. Or did you think she'd just be interested in how you can do magic and not see the real you anymore?' the witch commented. 'You're really full of it, aren't you? What entitles you to think so highly of yourself, and to think of Iona as some silly little girl who wouldn't be able to control herself when she saw what comes out of the end of your wand?'

'It isn't like that,' he said weakly, 'Iona and I are friends. You make it sound sordid and nasty. You don't know anything about it.'

'But you are sordid,' said the witch, a look of scorn on her lips. 'Just like any other adolescent boy. It all just comes down to the fact that you want to stick your tongue down her throat. Which is the last thing she wants by the way.'

Simon stood in front of the witch in silence, his eyes wide.

'I'm going to find out who you are,' he said angrily, his chin trembling. 'There's something suspect about you. You're a disgrace to magic, innate or otherwise.'

The witch smirked as she listened to him.

'I only have one more thing to say,' she said. 'And that's good luck finding me. You may be needing this.' With that she threw the wand in his face. It bounced off his forehead and dropped to the ground, landing in the mud. He knelt down and picked up the wand, almost cradling it as he held it in his hands. When he looked up the witch was gone and he was alone again under the trees.

Iona opened her eyes. The candles had burned lower and the room was darker. Lillian had her arm around her shoulder, while the others still stood around her in a wide circle.

'A very entertaining show,' said Lilian, addressing the assembled company. 'Even the parts that were invention still held enough of the truth. You led him on expertly, and you knew just how to hurt him.'

The others were silent; Iona felt sure that if Lillian was impressed, they must be too.

'How do you feel?' said Lilian in a lower voice.

'Awful,' replied Iona slowly.

'A fleeting moment of lucidity,' replied Lilian. 'You try to hold onto it, but it slips away as quickly as it comes. You are our seventh, Iona, if you want to be.'

Iona raised her head, fixing the gaze of those in her line of sight through slightly glassy eyes.

She turned to Lilian.

'I do,' she said.


	26. The vigilance of Hermione Granger - Ch 4

4\. The wand trade

It was already dark by the time Harry Potter started to climb Farringdon Road. He passed silently under the streetlights, his footsteps languid, almost in slow motion compared to the rapid pace of the people around him on the street. As he made his way up the hill the sequence of buildings that lined the street came quickly back to him. He preferred not to calculate how much time had passed since he walked those streets every day, as far as he knew just a regular Londoner working in a bookshop, but the office buildings, the names of the streets and even the faces on the passers-by seemed from a completely different era.

He couldn't get the press conference out of his mind. The idea of putting the prisoners on public display had been the brainchild of Luther Penhaligon and Myra Tremayne. He had intended to oppose it until he learned that Kingsley had given his approval. _You'll have to make compromises from now on_, Hermione had told him that day on the way back to the Burrow. _She was right of course_. The press conference had been followed by questions and answers with the wizarding press from three countries and an impromptu reception. The incessant barrage of questions in a variety of different languages, some channelled through interpreters, and the vacuous chatter of the reception had left him in a state of fatigued over-stimulation. He had made his excuses and slipped out before the end. _The higher up the Ministry you get, the better placed you'll be to decide how we deal with a threat from witchfinders_, Hermione had told him. _And being who you are, you're the natural choice_. The corridors of the Ministry had had a claustrophobic, overheated air about them as he paced back to his office. The quiet satisfaction he had felt at how the operation in Ostend had gone was almost forgotten already. _Why don't you do it? No one will be better dealing with this than you_, had been his reply. _Because I'm going to be very busy doing something that everyone will think is at best a waste of time and at worst an act of sedition, _she had told him_. And you'll need to go along with them_.

At the top of the hill he swung onto Exmouth Market, which was a mass of twinkling lights and animation in the early evening. Halfway down the street on the left he stopped before a narrow shop front with a sparse, slightly faded window display. Without any hesitation he pushed on the front door and went inside.

There were no customers in the shop. This suited him. He made his way past the bookcases and display cabinets, loaded as always with books and occult objects, to the back of the shop. A tall young man with long, straggly straw blonde hair and a ruddy, smooth, almost hairless face was waiting for him behind the counter.

'You made it then at last …' said Armin Vlaminck, squinting at him under the glare of the bulb that hung above the counter.

'I'd have come sooner,' Harry replied, scratching his head vacantly, 'but I don't have as much free time as I used to, and this place is a little bit out of my way.'

He glanced around the silent shop.

'I see business is as good as ever,' he remarked.

'Business is good actually,' replied Armin. 'Online sales are up. But the shop is useful because customers still want to collect their merchandise in person. Plus some of what we sell can't be put in a parcel and sent through the post. You'll see why in a minute.'

'Good to hear it,' said Harry, his curiosity growing. 'What can I do for you then?'

'Come out the back,' said Armin, beckoning for Harry to step around the counter. 'You know the way.'

Harry nodded and followed Armin into the back room of the shop. Everywhere was evidence of the shop's booming internet and mail order business. Harry sat down on a pile of parcels while Armin unlocked the safe and took out a large black box, which he set down among piles of books on a battered desk in the corner of the room. Harry peered over his shoulder as Armin opened the box. Laid about neatly on the box's black velvet lining was a series of objects. Most were immediately identifiable as wands, but among them were more elaborate objects that were unfamiliar to him, objects of wood, jade, bronze, carved with strange contorted beasts, mounted with skulls and even sharp, evil-looking blades.

'What do you think?' said Armin in a satisfied-sounding voice. 'Your line of expertise, wouldn't you say?'

Harry looked into the box and reached for one of the wands.

'May I?' he said, hesitating for a moment before his hands closed around the object.

'I trust you to handle it properly,' said Armin.

Harry took out the wand. It was more intricately carved than any wand he had seen before, and was inscribed with a series of letters in an alphabet he couldn't read. But when he held it in his hand, he felt nothing. No surge of power from the wand, no connection to the holder.

'A dead piece of wood.' he said. 'Not a real wand.'

'Not to you perhaps,' replied Armin. 'But you don't have the monopoly on magical practices.'

Harry glanced at Armin. He was in his element. The first rule binding wizards had been broken the day Harry had inadvertently performed magic before him. The demonstration of authentic magic by a pair of wizards, right in his shop, had, as he put it, validated his entire life's work. Harry recalled that he had never found out who had sent the cursed package in his name. If Hermione knew, she had never told him. _Surely she would have found a way to tell me_.

'The wand you have in your hand there is early American Colonial. About 1660,' said Armin. 'Now look at this one,' he continued, pointing to a similar wand in the box. 'Central American, early twentieth century. Look how similar the designs are to the one in your hand. And this one is eighteenth century, from the Basque Country. That one is Lithuanian, nineteenth century. And this,' he continued, pointing to a wooden stick with a small carved wooden skull mounted at its tip, 'comes from the Ural Mountains. It's as recent as the 1940s. It's not actually a wand. It's called a _Sheremet_. Upstairs I have a sorcerer's staff from the Pacific Islands. It's too big and fragile to keep down here. All authentic objects, some merely symbolic, some actually usable.'

'What do you mean, usable?' said Harry.

'I mean that practitioners of arts other than the one you practise have used these objects to perform magic. Now what do you make of these?' Armin pointed to a number of wands that looked much more like the kind Harry was used to. Harry picked up one. _No response._

'This is a replica,' he said firmly. 'A convincing one, but this can no more do magic than a pencil can.'

'I believe you,' replied Armin. 'There are a lot of these replica wands about. More than ever, in fact. And they are getting more and more convincing: they have specially made cores and everything. It would take a real wizard to tell a real wand from a replica, but you also need expertise from a real wizard to make such convincing replicas.'

'You're probably right,' said Harry. 'I hope you're not going to tell me you've been selling trade secrets?'

'I would never, ever do such a thing,' replied Armin earnestly, his eyes bright. 'I just want to encourage you and your people to take a close look at what's going on. Which brings me to this …'

He took another wand out of the case and handed it to Harry. The wand looked innocuous, but as soon as Harry touched it, he knew it was genuine. For a few moments he said nothing. He simply held the wand still in his hand, feeling the charge it emitted. Still holding the wand, he looked up at Armin.

'This one's real,' he said in a strange, strangled voice.

'I thought it might be,' replied Armin.

'Are you going to tell me how you got it or not?' said Harry.

'I am, I am,' replied Armin. 'A dealer sold it to me.'

'A dealer?' exclaimed Harry. His first thought was of Mundungus Fletcher, but he had supposedly retired to Gran Canaria.

'And this isn't the first wand he's sold me. The others were almost certainly genuine too. The dealer did do a little demonstration of their powers for me, but that's not exactly conclusive. The dealer may well be a wizard but he's still a dealer. It's only now that I got my hands on a genuine wizard to authenticate it for me.'

Harry looked at him.

'So let me get this straight, there's a wizard who comes into this shop on a regular basis selling you genuine wands? What do you do with them?'

'Some we keep, others we sell. The question is: where is he getting them from?'

What was going on? Were the wands stolen? He hadn't heard of any break-ins at wand shops. Or had wizards sold their wands willingly? He had to admit that it was a possibility: it fitted well with Hermione's theory that the next generation of wizards was less interested in using magic than any generation that had gone before.

'It's a good thing you came today,' said Armin. 'I'm expecting the dealer this evening. He brought me this wand a couple of days ago. I told him I needed time to authenticate it and discuss with my financial backers whether the shop is going to buy it or not. Because real ones don't come cheap, you know.'

'Oh I'm looking forward to meeting him,' replied Harry ominously.

'You can't do that,' said Armin. 'I'll have to ask you to stay hidden while he's here.'

'Really?' said Harry, rather disappointed.

'You're not planning to arrest him, I presume?'

'Arrest him? No, I don't have that sort of power. I just want to get a look at the …'

'Traitor?'

'Yeah, something like that.'

'Well, you can have a look at him. But surely it's better if he doesn't see you, isn't it?'

'Fair enough,' said Harry. 'Where do you want me to go?'

'Wait upstairs in the spare room,' said Armin. 'Lift up the rug on the floor, you'll find a peephole. Ignore the mess, it's just as it always was.'

Harry nodded and exited the room. He stepped out onto the cramped hall and then made his way quickly up the steep, creaking stairs to the flat above the shop where Armin lived. At the top of the stairs was another small landing, with four doors leading off it. He opened the door directly in front of him and stepped into what was the flat's spare room, which was theoretically intended for guests, but which was mostly used as a storeroom. As he glanced about the piles of books, magazines and other detritus, he recalled that Armin's own bedroom just across the landing was just as much a storeroom as the room he was standing in. He kneeled before the threadbare rug that lay in a crumpled heap in the middle of the room and lifted it up. Beneath the rug, as Armin had promised, was a small hole in the floor. He bent over and put his eye to it and found himself looking down into the backroom of the shop, where Armin was busy pacing back and forth, but for the time being alone.

He sat back up and looked around the room again. He stood up and went to the window, which was small and smudged and overlooked a dingy courtyard surrounded by a high brick wall. Then he crossed the room to where a bed lay pushed up against the far wall. The bed obviously hadn't been slept in for a long time, and was piled with books. He shifted a pile of books out of the way and sat down, running his hand over the bedcover and tracing a line through the dust. The bed's slightly musty smell was instantly familiar to him. _Has anyone slept here since we did?_ Over two years they had done what they had set out to do, done all that had to be done so everyone could live harmoniously; after all that time the room still seemed marooned in an unchanging present.

Voices could be heard downstairs. He slipped noiselessly across the room and returned to his place at the peephole.

At first he could only make out the tops of their heads. Armin's straw blonde hair was easily recognisable, while the dealer was partly concealed under a baseball cap. After exchanging pleasantries, Armin and the dealer crossed the room to the box of magical objects, affording Harry a better view of them. The first thing that struck him about the 'dealer' was that he barely looked old enough to have finished school. He was dressed in typical muggle street clothes, which gave off a smell of cannabis that came drifting up through the peephole.

'I have a question,' Armin was saying. 'A simple curiosity.'

'Go on,' said the dealer.

'How come the owner was willing to part with the object?'

The dealer seemed to smile. His face was pale and still acne scarred in places.

'Does it make a difference?' he said, in a clipped, rather well-to-do accent.

'As I said, a simple curiosity,' replied Armin. 'It has no bearing on the sale.'

As Harry crouched over the peephole, an idea occurred to him. He reached silently into his pocket and drew out his wand, which he held close to his face as he looked again through the hole.

'They aren't stolen, if that's what you're thinking,' said the dealer. 'People know that you can get a very good price for one of these things, and the sellers would rather have the money. Simple as that. I'd sell mine, but I don't need to, I make plenty out of selling other people's.'

'Fair enough,' said Armin. 'We'll take it. At the price we agreed earlier.'

The dealer pursed his lips.

'Done,' he said finally, thrusting out his hand and shaking Armin's.

As the dealer turned to leave, Harry raised his head and pointed the shaft of the wand through the hole.

'_Reducitur_,' he whispered under his breath. The dealer made no gesture that indicated that he was aware of the charm that had been cast.

When Armin entered the upstairs room he found Harry sitting quietly on the bed.

'I've put a trace on him,' he said, looking up. 'I want to see who he's meeting.'

'Ok, but I hope you'll be discreet about it,' said Armin. 'I have a feeling it would be bad for business if you assault one of our dealers as soon as he leaves the shop.'

'Don't worry,' replied Harry grimly. 'I'm not going to do anything to him. He seems a bit beyond help.'

He stood up.

'Can you still get up onto the roof of this building?'

'What, do you want to fly off the roof?' replied Armin.

'Funny,' said Harry sarcastically. 'Give me that wand and I'll show you.'

Armin nodded and handed Harry the wand. Then he led the way out onto the landing, before using all of his height to reach up and open a hatch in the ceiling and pull down a ladder. They climbed the ladder and passed through a darkened attic cluttered with wooden crates and rotting cardboard boxes, until they reached a small window that opened onto a flat section of the roof. Armin swung open the window and they stepped out onto the roof terrace. The building was tall enough to offer a sweeping view to the north and east. In the dark of the evening London was lit up in every direction and a cool breeze was blowing.

'What are we doing up here?' said Armin.

'I want to try something,' said Harry, gazing out into the darkness vaguely in the direction of the illuminated skyscrapers of the City. He lifted the newly purchased wand and spoke softly into the night air.

'_Tenere manus_.'

'Hold hands?' said Armin.

Harry nodded and gestured for him to look out into the bank of lights that spread out below them. Almost at once, countless points of light pulsed on and off in the darkness. Some of the points of light were scattered and isolated, while others were gathered together like miniature constellations.

'What was that?' said Armin.

'Those were the brothers and sisters of this wand, wands that all share some common feature, like the type of core or the tree the shaft came from,' replied Harry, still staring out into the darkness.

'So the places where many lights were gathered together, those are gathering of wizards here in central London?' said Armin.

'Yes,' said Harry. 'Gives you a sense of how many of us there are. Of course, since the Ministry of Magic is down there somewhere, that would account for a lot of them.'

'I wish I could remember where I saw the greatest concentration of lights,' said Armin as he looked out over London. 'Then I would know where the Ministry lies too.'

'Good for you that you didn't,' said Harry. 'Else I'd have to erase your memory. I don't recommend it.'

Armin half-laughed in response.

'That dealer's out there somewhere,' said Harry, scratching his chin thoughtfully. 'I wonder how many of those little points of light have gone out already because of people like him. That charm I did only works on wands that are still with the wizard they chose.'

'If the lights are going out, it's because their owners have no need for them anymore,' replied Armin. 'They're giving them up willingly.'

'We'll see,' said Harry, adding quickly, 'I have to go now. Thanks Armin.' Before Armin had a chance to reply, Harry was already gone from the ledge.

* * *

Down on the South Bank the breeze was colder and stronger. Harry slipped into the crowd of passers-by, following the dealer as he headed eastwards. Where the noise and the lights ran out, the Thames was vast, dark and silent. He couldn't see the dealer through the mass of bodies in front of him, but thanks to the tracking charm he knew which direction he was taking. In the vicinity of Southwark Bridge the youth turned off the main path and stopped. Harry looked up at the bridge with a shiver then quickly passed under its grey hulk, pausing at the entrance to an alleyway. The dealer had stopped there and was in conversation with another person who had presumably been waiting for him at the far end of the alley. Harry inched down the alley without making any sound then stepped into a doorway to listen in on the meeting going on further down. As he looked around the edge of the wall he could see money pass from the dealer to the wand's seller. _His share of the profits_. The seller, with his thin face and nose ring, looked possibly even younger than the dealer. _At his age he should be in Hogwarts. Maybe he dropped out?_

'So if you hear of anyone else interested in selling theirs, let me know,' said the dealer.

The seller nodded and pocketed a wad of £10 notes. Harry decided he had seen enough and stepped out from his hiding place.

'Well this is a new one on me,' said Harry, in a loud, ironic tone. 'Wizards selling their wands? I have to say, the new generation isn't looking very promising.'

The two whirled around and stared at Harry. Their surprise at his sudden appearance turned to shock as they realised who he was. The dealer was the first to regain his cool, and a smirk soon spread over his face. The seller of the wand continued to gawp at Harry, his pale blue eyes bulging.

'Well well,' began the dealer. 'Is that really Harry Potter? Bit of a blast from the past, eh? Could I trouble you for an autograph? It's still worth a few quid, but not as much as it used to be.'

Harry raised his wand and poked it at the dealer.

'This transaction is cancelled,' he remarked grimly. The dealer's smile faded. In the meantime, the seller had his back up against the wall and was trying to inch his way past Harry. Harry wheeled around and pointed the wand at him. The seller recoiled, reaching in his pocket for the wad of bank notes.

'Are you on Ministry business?' said the dealer. 'This hardly counts as an act of dark wizardry, so I can't see why the Auror Office would be interested. Or have you been demoted?'

'I'm on my own business,' replied Harry. 'I just want to understand what's going on here.'

'In that case,' replied the dealer, 'since the great Harry Potter does us the honour of sticking his nose into our business, I'll tell you. It's perfectly simple: this guy here doesn't need his wand anymore and wanted to sell it. I have good contacts, and got him a good price for his trouble. Nothing more and nothing less. No dark wizards, just business.'

'What you do with your wands is your business, as you say,' replied Harry, 'I just want to know why.'

He turned to the seller again.

'Why did you want to sell your wand?'

The seller looked at him sadly.

'I was never that good at magic,' he began. 'I did my OWLs in the summer. I just scraped through most of them. My parents wanted me to go back, but I'm not going to. I'm supposed to hand over my wand to some office at the Ministry if I don't go back. I told them I lost it. The woman at the Ministry told me to fill out a declaration, and that was that. It's my wand. I'll do with it what I like. And to be honest, I need the money.'

'What do your friends at Hogwarts think about this?'

The seller grimaced slightly.

'My best friends are Muggles, not wizards,' he replied. 'I told this girl I could do magic, but it never came out right, and I made a fool of myself. I'm best rid of magic.'

'You told some girl you can do magic?' exclaimed Harry. 'Don't you know the first rule of being a wizard?'

'Ah, I'm pretty much an ex-wizard.'

Harry stared at the seller, who stared back at him with a vacant expression.

'Satisfied?' said the dealer. Harry turned to him.

'I'm still putting you out of business,' he replied. The dealer's eyes narrowed, and he reached into his pocket. Harry was about to disarm the dealer when he heard the tread of a foot just down the alley.

'I'll decide who gets put out of business tonight,' came a voice. Standing before them was a man with tanned skin and a long dark ponytail. He was smartly dressed and held a wand in his hand. He looked about the same age as Harry himself.

'Who are you supposed to be?' said Harry.

'I know him,' said the dealer. 'He tried to buy a wand off me last month. He got rather tetchy because another buyer outbid him.'

'The wand you have there looks pretty serviceable,' remarked Harry, peering at the man with the ponytail. 'Why do you need to buy someone else's?'

'It's certainly none of your business,' replied the man, looking scornfully at Harry. Then he turned to the dealer. 'But you, you really should have sold the wand to me.'

'Not my problem if other people are willing to pay than you.'

The man smiled at him coldly.

'I've come to propose new terms.'

'Sorry, I've already sold that one,' replied the dealer, defiant to the last.

'The new terms apply from now,' said the man. 'Any wands that come into your possession, you'll sell them to me. Otherwise the organisation I represent will be extremely unhappy. And if that happens, I'm afraid you won't be selling anything to anyone, however useful you may be.'

'You're threatening me in front of witnesses?' said the dealer.

'What witnesses?' replied the man.

There was a moment of complete silence. Then there was a flash of light and the wizard's curse was deflected against the wall, where it shattered a section of ancient, soot-stained bricks. The wizard scowled at Harry and fired at him. Harry parried again and fired off a counter-curse, which pinned the wizard against the wall for a few moments, giving the young wizard who had sold his wand time to run off down the alley. The wizard was up again in an instant, firing off a volley of curses, which Harry parried, now with the assistance of the dealer, who seemed to be pretty handy with a wand after all. Together they pushed the wizard back down the alley, until the sound of voices and footsteps on the path outside began to be heard over the wand play. With one glance behind him, the wizard disapparated, leaving Harry and the dealer alone in the alley.

'Thanks,' said the dealer. Before Harry could reply the dealer punched him in the stomach, winding him. As Harry fell to his knees, clutching his stomach and gasping for breath, the dealer winked at him and disapparated. Harry slowly pulled himself to his feet, coughing.

'Don't mention it,' he muttered.


	27. The vigilance of Hermione Granger - Ch 5

5\. Begin the circle

The garden was catching the last rays of sun before the dusk; the house was already in shadow. Hermione made her way noiselessly up the drive; no lights were on in the house. Once the sweep of trees was at her back, shielding her from the road, she took out her wand and began to mutter a series of incantations under her breath. As she finished the last of them, the front door of the house swung silently open and she walked up the steps. It was a 1930s house, pebble-dashed and double-fronted, with a garage at one end and a further room built over the top of it.

The light was faint inside the house but she didn't pause to turn on any lights. She went straight up the stairs and turned right onto the landing, passing a series of closed doors before stopping in front of the last of them, where the landing reached a dead end. The distance from any window made the lack of light there even more palpable. Her wand long since stowed in her inside pocket, she reached out her hand and laid it against the door, her fingertips pressed against its surface. She whispered another incantation and the door opened.

She switched the light on and rapidly crossed the room, throwing her bag down on the sofa bed propped up against the far wall. She frequently left the curtains half-closed, so that even in full daylight there was only a rather anaemic light in the room. Her cheeks burned suddenly at the memory of the day: Ron's father's apparent interest in her studies, her total failure to refute any of Mortimer Knott's arguments, the press conference … the press conference especially, the way those wizards treated her, the looks on their faces … the look on Harry's face.

Her office, as it was called, was situated at the end of the landing, above the garage in which Ron hoped one day to have his own car, but which in the meantime had become a storeroom for all manner of objects that he had acquired either from his father or from charity shops and car boot sales, all part of his efforts to educate himself in the ways of the Muggles, as he put it. Hermione rarely entered the garage, since she already knew full well the names and uses of all the objects stored there. Instead she had occupied the room above it. Her reasoning had been that as it was set apart from the other rooms on the upstairs floor, she would be less of a disturbance in there. She had scarcely left her mark on the rest of the house, which seemed to function largely as Ron's domain.

She looked up at the wall, where she had pinned up a large rendering of the Seven-Pointed Circle that she had drawn herself, based on several versions of it she had found over two years of research. It hung there like a large black spider's web. For all his pomposity, Mortimer Knott wasn't wrong: meanings had shifted and been erased from translation to translation. From the original Urartian to old Armenian, to ancient Greek, to Latin and finally into English, the text had passed between languages whose very structures varied greatly from one to another and which themselves had changed over the centuries and millennia.

There were two main difficulties she had had to deal with: moving from the symbolism in the text to actual incantations, and making sure that the text was accurate, and not based on mistranslations or misprints. She had had access to the English copy of _The Testament of Sie_ kept in Armin's bookshop, but that wasn't enough on its own. She couldn't master all the languages through which the text had passed, so she had had to track down commentaries written along the centuries by those that had dabbled in or sought to enter the Circle. This had meant long journeys to various muggle and wizarding libraries, long hours pouring over their manuscripts, and even longer hours of work in her office, working out the correct incantations, memorising and practising them, and starting again when they went wrong. Needless to say, no one really saw the merit in all this work, least of all Ron. And of course there was no one with whom she could discuss her interpretations and doubts, apart from Lilian Herrick herself. Knott's warning was genuine: a wrong turn in the incantations, or speaking them in the wrong state of mind, could lead to dark and dangerous places. And even a supposed master of the technique, like Lillian Herrick, was hardly sane.

She opened her bag and took out the well-worn stack of papers from within. Taking off her coat, she sat down on the floor in the centre of the room. The office was in its usual state of semi-disorder. The disorder was of a kind that manifested itself in spite of repeated attempts at tidying: books, papers and other objects cluttered nearly every surface, all recently put into neat piles, but already skewed and overflowing. _I've got used to living in shadow. Like her._ Running her hand through her hair and taking a couple of deep breaths to try to shake off the tiredness of the day, she laid the pages out in an arc around her on the floor, first a series of dense texts called _The Seven Dreams_, and then closest to her a shorter fragment of text known as _The Seven Symbols_. Last of all, under the middle page of the arc, she laid down a blank page.

_I saw seven circles, one within the other ever inwards, till the last was silence_

_Seven spokes has the wheel, seven points on seven circles_

_Six voices spoke to me, then silence divided into seven_

_I dreamed of seven gifts, of great noise and fragile melody_

_I sung seven songs: the words walked and dissonance faded_

_Seven words remained: six inscribed on my heart, the seventh unknowable_

_When the seventh is known, the circle is closed._

She redirected the light from the light bulb above her head so that it illuminated the Seven-Pointed Circle on the wall, throwing the rest of the room into semi-darkness. She closed her eyes, while fixing her gaze on the words in the outermost circle.

_You are the night I am opening_

The words began to swirl and rotate, until the ending closed over the beginning, forming a single, repeating incantation until the passing of time was no longer perceptible. Through her closed eyes she could still see the circle, which seemed almost to glow white in the darkness. The day's humiliation and the tiredness in her limbs faded, until all that remained was the syncopation of the words in the darkness and the circle on the wall, which rotated incessantly in front of her, sometimes slowly, sometimes with great speed. While her eyes remained fixed on the circle, her unseeing gaze focused on the dense text of the first of the seven dreams, so that the words seemed as if they were superimposed on her eyes. At last, the first words began to fall from the page. One by one they fell, until only one word remained: _helpless_.

At once she shifted her gaze to the next circle inwards, and the words of the incantation glided seamlessly into the next:

_You are the flesh that unmakes me_

Round and round in the dark went the incantation, until the words began to fall from the second page. By now she was no longer even aware of her limbs: it was as if they were completely numb, or not there at all.

The last word left on the page was: _before_.

She descended another level, passing within the next circle.

_My cruel heart is your light unseen_

Now everything seemed to move more quickly: the words succeeded each other faster, the circle whirled on, and her mind seemed to retreat further from the waking world. When for the third time the words began to fall it was as if almost no time had elapsed. The page was already half empty.

Then the door opened and artificial light flooded the darkness where she was sitting. As she was flung back out through the outer circles, all the worries, frustrations, fears and humiliations of her waking days reoccupied the empty terrain. She heard herself shout, but her lips were numb and the shout fell silent. She was filled with rage at the harsh light that had flooded the room, chasing away the clarity of the darkness. The magic that had fallen silent in the dark was back at her fingertips and scorching the palms of her hands. In her anger she flung a dagger of fire across the room at the source of the light.

'Owwwww!' howled Ron Weasley, who was suddenly hopping about in the doorway, putting out the fire that had started in his hair. Her hands were no longer burning and she could see clearly again. Ron had evidently dropped his wand, which lay on the carpet next to where he stood.

'Merlin's beard! What are you playing at?' shouted Ron in a voice hoarse with surprise. As part of his attempts to blend in with Muggles, Ron usually was at pains not to use wizarding language. _I must really have shocked him_. Her head reeling, she swayed to her feet.

'Ron, I'm sorry,' she said in a thin voice, her mouth dry. 'That was inexcusable.'

'Too right it was!' he replied. Now she noticed the smell of burnt hair. Slowly she crossed to the doorway where he was still standing.

'I thought the house was empty,' he said. 'No lights on, no sign of life. No light under your office door either. Then I felt something weird. It was like the wind was blowing through an open window, only there was no window. I thought someone had broken in. I suppose I should've known it was you.'

'I'm sorry,' she repeated in a low voice. She reached out and touched his arm but he stepped away. 'I was … I think I was really close to a breakthrough. You gave me a shock.'

'_I_ gave _you_ a shock?' said Ron, touching the singed ends of his hair. 'You could've blinded me.'

'I know,' said Hermione contritely, reaching out again and rubbing his arm. 'I'm really sorry. The light bursting in like that sort of unhinged me. I suppose it's a bit like waking a sleepwalker.'

Ron shot her a rather confused glare.

'Unhinged you …' he repeated in a low voice. They stared at each other for a few moments.

'Are you coming then?' he said in a slightly sulky tone.

'Coming where?' she replied.

'Out of here, out of the circle, or wherever it is you are this evening.'

She looked at him with a pained expression.

'Ron, I'm so close,' she said softly.

'Close to what? Close to going completely round the twist? Close to killing me in my sleep? Close to disappearing into this circle you're so fond of?'

She said nothing in reply.

'Even if what you're doing is worth it in some way, are you sure you can control this thing?' he continued.

'I have to try,' she replied in the same gentle, sad voice. 'You know why.'

'Yes, I know why,' he replied, and they looked at one another in silence.

'Is this a good time to remind you that two years have gone by and nothing's happened?'

A slightly ironic look slipped out onto her face.

'I suppose you mean that Lillian Herrick has realised she can't beat the Ministry and has just given up.'

'I don't say she's given up,' said Ron, 'she presumably is barking after all. But she's overestimated her abilities.'

'I don't think so,' Hermione retorted. 'I almost wonder whether she's waiting for me to be ready.'

'Well in that case, why are you even trying? You do nothing and she'll do nothing.'

'It won't work like that. The threat is just as real, whenever it gets put into action.'

'If we're on the subject of threats to the wizarding world, what did happen after the press conference this afternoon? You seemed to disappear very quickly. And why were you sitting right up the back?'

She was rather grateful to him for changing the subject. Talking about Lillian Herrick always had them going round in circles, which was quite possibly a bad joke on her part.

'Oh I arrived late,' she replied, answering the easiest question first.

'What did Elias Rathbone and that other one … what's his name … want?'

'Dunsmore Weaver.'

'Yes, that's him.'

'Oh, just the usual,' she replied. 'To get me to confess to being a Citadel sympathiser.'

'And you told him you're not, I suppose …'

'I don't think they were very interested in hearing my actual opinions.'

He frowned.

'Why didn't you just tell them straight out?'

'I wasn't particularly interested in talking to them.'

'If you won't tell idiots like Rathbone and Weaver, then it's no wonder that some people think you are a sympathiser. Otherwise they just think of …'

_Here we are, back on this …_

'… Of my feeble attempts to convince the wizarding world that there's a threat out there that doesn't come from other wizards?'

Ron shrugged his shoulders vaguely.

'We got rid of a real threat to the Ministry, and to the wizarding world in general.'

'Well, I suppose everything's going to be fine then.' She didn't try to reign in the sarcasm in her voice.

'For a while, yes,' he replied. 'The Auror Office does its job so everyone else can go about their business in peace, and spend their time criticising and belittling us if they want.'

'The Auror Office is very good at catching wizards,' said Hermione, fixing Ron with a sharp glance. 'You do help wizards to sleep better in their beds. But it's all based on the assumption that the greatest threat to wizards comes from other wizards.'

'Can we change the subject?' said Ron.

_That was quick._

'Anyway, please tell me you don't really support Belhaine,' he continued.

'Of course I don't!' she exclaimed. 'I find his agenda loathsome. And I've told Tobias Destrument myself. But it doesn't stop me being worried about …'

'Tobias Destrument was the one who tried to curse Harry in that house in Ostend,' Ron exclaimed, suddenly half-shaking his fist. 'Smarmy, arrogant git. And a psychopath as well as it turns out.'

'I think psychopath's taking it a bit far, Ron.'

'Do you? What if a Death Eater had just tried to murder Harry? You wouldn't think I was going too far then.'

'Not every Death Eater was a psychopath. Far from it. You'd be surprised how easy it was for people to get sucked into it.'

'And the same goes for the Citadel too. They're the biggest threat we've faced since the Death Eaters.'

'Maybe they will turn out to be. But they aren't there yet.'

'Hermione, what are you on? They tried to assassinate the Minister of Magic.'

'Wasn't it a rather feeble attempt at an assassination? Was it more a demonstration of something rather than a genuine attempt to kill Kingsley? I don't exactly know what it was, and I'm not sure anyone else does exactly. But I know it's not the same as slaughtering goodness knows how many innocent people, wizards and non-wizards.'

Ron shook his head.

'I think I'll mention this to Harry. See what he has to say about it.'

'Do what you like. I don't care all that much,' retorted Hermione. Ron's eyes widened in surprise. Even she was surprised by the petulance of her reply. 'What I mean is, I'm afraid he's getting too much of a politician. He may not be able to give a non-political answer.'

Ron studied her critically.

'Why does his success bother you?' he asked. 'Why does the success of the Auror Office annoy you?'

'It's not that exactly.'

'Why don't you want to be part of this generation, after you did so much to make it what it is today? Why aren't you on our side anymore?'

'I am on your side.'

'Are you? It's as if it doesn't matter to you anymore that you were part of the Order of the Phoenix, that you were part of why Voldemort was defeated. You helped to rebuild the Ministry, together with Kingsley, and Harry, and Ginny, and me, even. Aren't you proud of that?'

'I am,' she replied. 'But it's sort of ancient history now.'

He sighed. She noticed how dark the circles around his eyes were.

'You should get some rest,' she said more gently. 'What time was it when you got back? Three o'clock?'

'Yeah, about then,' he replied, smiling ruefully.

He looked at her in silence.

'You're not coming, are you?' he added after a few moments.

She shook her head sombrely.

'I can't. Not now.'

Sighing, she switched the light on and went back into the room. She wasn't sure if she had the strength to step back into the circle. But to lie down and rest would be impossible. She opened a desk drawer, lifted up a stack of papers that had been jammed inside and slid out a sheet of paper from among them. It was an A5 size tract. At the top of the tract, printed in red letters, were the words: _Does a witch live next door to you_? Below them was a series of photographs. One showed a house with a series of runes carved above the door in red. The runes read: _Sacrifice taken_. The next image showed a dog that had been strung from a tree. The third showed a patch of ground scattered with feathers, bones, scorch marks and what looked like blood stains in the dirt. The last image was a picture of her. She had no idea where the image had come from, but she had to admit that they had done a good job of making her look strange and vaguely menacing. She was standing on a bleak piece of waste ground and a strange light seemed to be emanating from one of her hands. She turned over the sheet. The text on the back of it read: _Forget the stereotypical image of a witch. They don't stand around cauldrons, cackling and mixing potions: they look like ordinary people, and they're living within our communities, even next door to us. They quietly go about their business, safe in the knowledge that if anyone gets in their way, they have the power to dispose of them_. _If you have one living next door to you, you should be worried_. _If you're suspicious about a neighbour and want to know what signs to look for, you can find out more at our website_. _We have evidence of wizards and witches at work up and down Britain. We will take your suspicions seriously_.

It had been a particularly unpleasant surprise when Isaac Edwards had handed her the tract. A contact of his in witchfinding circles had passed it on to him. Hermione had used the most powerful summoning spell she could produce in order to find and gather in every copy of the tract, wherever they were located. When she had gathered a substantial pile of them, she had burned them in her back garden, deliberately using magically created fire to burn them. It was largely pointless, she had to admit, since the tract could easily be found on the internet, but the sight of the smouldering ashes had given her a perverse pleasure. Even so, the question of how the witchfinders had obtained a picture of her, and the idea that someone from within the wizarding world might have given it to them, had gnawed at her for months. Even then, as she turned the sheet over in her hand, unease enveloped her again. She laid the tract in the bottom of the drawer and turned away. She raised the hand that had thrown the burning dagger at Ron, tracing the lines in the palm of her hand and examining her slender fingers. They looked like normal hands, but the power they concealed couldn't always be kept in check. Many wizards led comfortable, middle-class lives in neat homes, their jobs in the Ministry of Magic mirroring the lives of people in the Muggle world. But in reality wizards were different, each harbouring a power that they didn't quite understand, burning inside them. In a way Mr Morley was right. In a way she wanted to see him again. With the same hand she extinguished the light and resumed her place in the centre of the room, beginning again the incantation of the outermost circle.

Her mind emptied more easily, the sense of time and place slipped away quicker. She moved inwards, from circle to circle.

_The fire soars_ _so I may descend_

_The ashes scatter so I may burn_

_The circle constricts_ _so I may breathe_

Once she had reached the sixth and penultimate circle, the incantation no longer had any words of its own. It was instead a silence that repeated and rotated, full of meaning and clearly distinguishable from the empty silence that surrounded it. _It works_. Even in that final silent incantation, she could see the words before her, falling from the page.

Now at last, she turned to the final page, the page that from the beginning had been blank. But this time seven words were visible: _Helpless before the pain of the other_.

It didn't occur to her to think what they meant. She saw only the strange, individual characters on the white page, and marvelled at how when taken together they formed words. When she looked up from the page the circle was no longer before her. Now there was only darkness, but it was a darkness that she could fill with whatever she chose. She had only to reach out her hand and fill the emptiness. She stood up and walked with unfaltering steps across the room to where the door must be, even though there was no line of light running along the bottom of it to show her the way. If she wanted to see the landing of her house beyond the door that was what she would see. She threw the door open and cold air rushed in. Beneath her feet the ground was hard and far above her rose a baleful red sky.


	28. The vigilance of Hermione Granger - Ch 6

6\. Seven gates

A street sloped downwards, bearing first right then left in a broad curve, lined on either side by a sweep of soot-stained houses four or five storeys tall. The light was indistinct under a thick cover of cloud, and the cobbles underfoot were moist and slippery. The street had a musty, enclosed smell. Feeble lights gleamed in a scattering of windows in the dull afternoon.

No one was on the street apart from Hermione. She followed the line of the street at a brisk pace, the sky barely visible over the facades of the houses. She paused at a junction and turned onto a side street, narrower and lined with smaller but equally run-down houses. Towering above them rose the sheer glass flank of a much taller building. The end of the street was shrouded in darkness.

Above a conventional brick-fronted ground floor, the building's upper half soared into the red-grey sky in two great curving wings of opaque glass, held up by a lattice of ironwork. Even from the street it was clear that the building was in disrepair. The green-tinted glass was made even more opaque by the layer of soot and dirt that covered it. The glass itself bore myriad cracks and scars and the iron that overlaid it was rusted and in places had come loose. A sign above the door read _Villa Mariposa_.

She walked purposefully up to the ornate, stained-glass front door and pushed it open. She stepped into a dimly lit entrance hall with a dirty mosaic floor, wood panelled walls and an industrial-looking girdered ceiling. Crossing the hall, she climbed the broad wooden staircase to the floor above. As she went up she passed into a shaft of pale light, which grew stronger as she continued up the staircase.

The staircase opened out into a vast space lit through its towering walls of glass. Before her was a row of great steel pillars, which supported a central galleried mezzanine running down the centre of the building. On either side of the gallery, the building rose high into the sky, the interior space enclosed in the two great glass wings visible from the street. Signs of decay and disrepair were everywhere, from the shards of fallen panes to the peeling paintwork on the pillars and the pigeon droppings smattered over the floor. _It wasn't supposed to look like this. Why does it look like this?_

She reached the gallery via a metal spiral staircase that rendered the building's dizzying scale all the more intimidating. She was relieved to step away from the metal-railed gallery into an inner chamber where the mounting sensation of vertigo could be kept at bay. The room she found herself in was an ordinary bedroom, uninhabited and sparsely decorated with old-fashioned furniture. The room was the first in a sequence of interlocking bedrooms, all similar to the first but furnished in different colours and shades. One of them seemed flooded with light from its glass roof. _But the light can't be natural._ Exotic plants were arranged around the room, as if it was some sort of greenhouse. The air was heavy and humid, so she moved quickly on. The last chamber was lined with oil paintings. Some were of places familiar to her: Hogwarts Castle seen from the shore of the black lake, her parents' house, a sandy beach in a rocky cove that she used to visit with her family as a child. Others depicted places and scenes unknown to her; some of them innocuous, others more menacing: a burning building with flames belching from the roof into the night sky, a dark-haired woman sitting on a bed in a room with paint-peeling walls, her face obscured, apparently contemplating the syringe she held in her hand. The most unsettling of the paintings depicted a vast, unnaturally regular rectangular expanse of grass, surrounded by tall still trees, under an empty red sky. The room wasn't as it should be either. The feeling of unease grew as she realised the room had not been decorated by her hand. _I don't want to stay here._ The only way out was back through the hothouse. She turned towards the open door behind her. A figure stood in the doorway, dark against the bright light flooding in from the glass room, a tall, slender woman in a long, pale green chiffon dress. The shade around her seemed to dissipate as she stepped into the room. She had long dark hair flecked with grey and piercing green eyes. Her smile had a serene, otherworldly quality about it.

'Hermione, so good to see you again!' Lillian Herrick said rapturously, seizing Hermione by the arm. Hermione tried vaguely to tear herself free, but the grip was quite firm.

'Sorry to have kept you,' she continued, 'but I've just been looking round. It's quite a creation, I must say. Although it could do with a bit of renovation.'

She raised her hand from Hermione's arm and touched her cheek. Again she couldn't prevent the gesture.

'But even if it didn't come out quite right, it's still spectacular.'

'I'm so glad you like it,' Hermione replied in as deadpan a tone as she could muster.

'Do you have any idea what pride a teacher feels when their favourite pupil outshines them?'

'I'm not your pupil,' said Hermione, shivering slightly.

'Yet here you are, inside the circle, following my footsteps. I'm not too proud to tell you that you've mastered them even quicker than I did. And you've done it all on your own, all without the benefits of my … pastoral care, shall we call it?'

'I'm not sure that's what I'd call it.'

'You may outdo me altogether.'

'Well, I think I'd better. Otherwise everyone's going to be in trouble.'

Lillian Herrick smiled.

'You're right to be vigilant,' she said. 'Particularly when everyone else is so complacent. And so focused on what doesn't matter.'

'You wouldn't have had a hand in that, I suppose?'

'Maybe I have, maybe I haven't. But even if I did, it wouldn't have involved much work on my part.'

Hermione shot her a look of bleak, humourless amusement.

'And this assassination attempt?' she asked. 'Was that your handiwork too?'

Lillian stroked Hermione's cheek and twirled a stray lock of her hair around her finger.

'You know I don't put guns in people's hands. Or in this case, wands in wizards' hands.'

Hermione smirked coldly.

'Well, whatever you have or haven't been doing, from now on when you're lurking in the shadows, you'll have to keep a look out for me too.'

'I know,' said Lillian with a giggle of excitement. 'We're going to have all sorts of fun, us girls.' She seemed to scrutinise Hermione even more closely. However probing her gaze was, Hermione refused to look away.

'All those late nights have taken their toll, Hermione,' she said, her eyes suddenly filling with what looked like sadness. 'All that time spent focusing and training the mind. Even a mind as sharp as yours.'

'It'll be worth it in the end.'

'The end?' said Lillian, her face suddenly paler. 'The end will be a sad place indeed. Let's not think about that now. You're still young and beautiful. Try and take better care of yourself, for my sake at least.'

'I'm fine,' Hermione replied.

'You know what the worst part is?' said Lillian, apparently ignoring her reply. 'It's the loneliness.'

'Are you talking about me or you?' said Hermione. Suddenly the urge to look away was overpowering her.

'You know what I mean,' Lillian replied. 'Now you know what it means to be alone. You probably even have some idea of what Harry once went through. Though maybe all that doesn't matter so much to him these days.'

Hermione felt her body go taut.

'He's off limits to you,' she replied coldly.

'He's your territory, is he?' said Lillian, her eyebrow cocked in amusement.

Hermione looked at her in silence, before remarking quietly:

'You won't get to him again. I'll make sure of that.'

Lillian's expression was inscrutable.

'I'm glad you're still loyal to him. You're right to be. Anyway, you know how much I approve of him. Almost as much as you do.'

Hermione forced herself to smile.

'One of the advantages of learning how to use the Seven-Pointed Circle is that I'm much better now at concealing my feelings from those who try and stick their nose in.'

This seemed to amuse Lillian.

'Yes, you're much better at hiding your feelings altogether these days. In fact you're so good you're making him suffer. He may even end up doubting you. Which, I suspect, would be the only thing that could make you suffer more than you already do.'

Hermione smiled again, this time a colder smile.

'But I'm much stronger now. I have so much more capacity to endure suffering, self-inflicted or otherwise.'

'I know you do, Hermione. That's why I'm so proud of you. By the way, I haven't been near him. Out of friendship to you.'

'Friendship?'

Suddenly her face seemed to relax, the smile less rictus-like.

'I understand you can't force these things. I'm not a complete psycho, you know.'

'No?' Hermione replied, almost half-laughing herself.

'In any case, I consider you as quite one of ours anyway.'

'Ours?' said Hermione, catching the inference straight away.

Lillian let go of Hermione and began to walk around her, tracing a vague kind of circle.

'The thing is, Hermione, there has to be more of us, if for nothing else so that we can form a circle.'

'You have followers, do you?' said Hermione.

'I wouldn't call them followers,' replied Lillian, continuing to circle her. 'Fellow travellers at best. You make it sound like a cult. That's not my style at all.'

'Oh well that's something,' Hermione remarked.

'I'd love to have you join of course, but we have a quorum for the moment. Still, if you wanted to try and dislodge one of us and take his or her place, you'd be welcome to try.'

'That would, I suppose, give me a better chance of beating you?' asked Hermione with heavy irony.

Lillian seemed genuinely amused at the idea.

'You know, I suppose it might. Why don't you give it a try?'

'No thanks.'

Lillian shook her head regretfully.

'Maybe later. You don't quite share our outlook on life at the moment.'

'I should hope not.'

'Problem is,' Lillian continued, stopping again in front of Hermione, 'if you don't take things to their logical conclusion, I'm afraid you won't be able to use the gifts properly.'

'I suppose you're going to offer me the benefits of your knowhow in this field,' replied Hermione.

'I will help you a bit,' said Lilian. 'You see, you're only halfway there: you're rather good at inflicting pain on those close to you, but even better at believing in your own innocence, which undoes all the good work that goes before it.'

'Guilt drives it, is that it?' said Hermione without expression.

'Guilt does drive it. And so, when I look around this place, I can still see the joins. But I do like what you've achieved. It's rather … picturesque, isn't it? But not exactly testament to a happy and well-adjusted psyche.'

'You made a few little adjustments though, is that right?' Hermione remarked. 'Just a little touch here and there?'

Lillian glanced around at the paintings on the walls and smiled.

'As your creation isn't completely stable I couldn't resist.'

'In any case,' Hermione replied. 'This is just the beginning.'

'You're right, Hermione,' said Lillian, her eyes suddenly flashing. 'It's time to come out of hiding. Come out into the bright light of the real world. You and all the born witches and wizards.'

_So we're back to that_.

'You'd better do your worst,' Hermione replied coolly.

'Oh well in that case, let's begin. Are you ready?' said Lilian, suddenly grabbing Hermione by the hand. At that moment the glass walls of the Villa Mariposa faded into darkness. At first the darkness seemed molten, before hardening into the dirty, weatherworn bricks of a narrow alleyway. The experience was much less jarring than apparition, Hermione noted. At the end of the alley was a silent, disused shop front. The shop sign, almost completely obliterated by time, read _Leftwich and Co_.

'Leftwich's?' Hermione remarked, scrutinising the dank, ancient brickwork and the dilapidated shop front. Leftwich's had been a milliner's shop for witches and wizards that had gone out of business years earlier. She didn't like the fact that Lillian Herrick knew about it. _A chink in the wall protecting the magical world_. One side faced the outside world, the other the inner world of wizards. There were other places like it here and there. In theory they posed no real danger of discovery. Isaac Edwards had told her about Leftwich's and other such places nearly two years ago. _At Leftwich's something went slightly wrong_. He took a particular interest in anyone sniffing around old abandoned entrances to the wizarding world. He had told her how he and Argenta had found Harry Potter in front of the disused shop, amnesiac and dishevelled, in the company of a mysterious man who hadn't been seen since. _If I paid more attention to what goes on inside wizarding society_, he had told her, _I might have recovered him right then. But he had no trace of magic on him._

Hermione had even walked down the alley to Leftwich's once. _You can't see anything, or even feel anything really_, Isaac had told her. _But it's there, and for some reason no amount of magic can seal it completely_.

'You know this place of course,' said Lillian, who then proceeded to open the shop's boarded up door.

'I know why it interests you,' Hermione replied.

'Oh good. Then step this way.'

They stepped over the threshold into the dark interior of the shop. A dank, dusty odour was everywhere. As Hermione's eyes grew accustomed to the dark, she could make out the decayed remains of the shop interior. She stepped on a soft, felt-like object on the floor and recoiled in shock. Composing herself, she peered down through the gloom at the object.

'It's a pointed hat,' whispered Lillian, 'of the kind wizards once wore …'

Lillian walked gaily to the back of the shop, passing the ancient wooden counter and stopping before a small door in the left-hand corner of the room at the rear. With a smile, Lillian invited Hermione to look through its small, semi-opaque glass pane. A thick layer of dust laid over it and even the glass itself seemed to smell of mildew. She wiped a little of the dust away and looked through. On the other side she could make out the wall of another ancient alleyway, the kind that led off Diagon Alley and round the backs of the shops there.

'It's as simple as that,' Lillian said in a soft voice. 'Looking inside your world.' Hermione turned. She was standing just next to her, her head less than a metre away.

'Really?' said Hermione nonchalantly.

'Don't believe me?'

'I don't make a habit of believing you.'

'I suppose that's wise, in a way at least. But on this occasion, it's the truth. The wall is very thin here. Just an old pane of glass.'

'Why don't you try and break it and see what happens?' Hermione replied.

'Oh I understand that it carries a protecting curse, even after all this time. But that isn't the point, which you must know.'

_How can the hole be visible to her? It isn't even visible to me._

'Anyway, why break the glass when you can just do this?' said Lillian, suddenly reaching out in front of Hermione. The next instant the door was open, as if it was the most ordinary of doors. A gasp of surprise leapt out of Hermione's mouth. She smothered it as quickly as she could. _This is an illusion_. _It must be_.

'Care to take a look for yourself?' said Lillian softly, gesturing through the open door.

'You didn't really just open the door,' Hermione said firmly.

'Not exactly,' Lillian replied.

'Is this an imagining of what you think is on the other side?' Hermione asked, rather snidely.

Lillian smiled.

'Oh it's a bit more than that.'

A light seemed to shine in from some unseen source. All was silent. Hermione stepped through the opening and out onto the pavement, a shard of glass cracking under her foot. The alleyway quickly turned right, opening out onto a wider street, lined with stone-fronted buildings of indeterminate age. The buildings seemed to have once been shops, but all the shop windows had been boarded up. Some of the buildings showed signs of recent damage, and first and second floor windows were also boarded up. At the end of a terrace a wall had toppled over, leaving a pile of bricks in the street and a gaping hole in the façade. As she approached the row of buildings, she noticed that the entrance to each of them had been sealed with police tape. She stopped before a boarded up door and touched the tape stretched over the entrance. Printed on the tape, over and over, were the words: _No entry: danger zone_. She lifted the tape and put her hand on the boarded-up door. A sound came from behind the door, something like footsteps mingled with whispered voices. She paused to listen, but the sounds vanished. She stepped away from the door. The street itself seemed to taper off into darkness at either end, and as she walked, each side street she glanced down offered only the same vague blackness. Finally she came across a street where the daylight poured in. She made her way past more boarded-up houses and shop fronts until she reached a kind of gate. In fact it was more an opening in the side of a wall, blasted open by an explosion of some kind, debris still littering the ground all around it. Here also, police tape had been stretched over the opening. She ducked under the tape and went out through the gate. She found herself on a normal London street, with cars and buses passing and pedestrians hurrying past, craning their necks to look into the opening in the wall. At that moment she heard footsteps approaching. She turned to see a policeman running towards her.

'Hey! Get away from here!' he shouted.

'Why, what is it?' Hermione replied, almost in spite of herself.

'What were you doing in there?' said the policeman. 'You can't go in there.'

'Why not?' she asked. The policeman grabbed her by the arm and directed her towards a sign plastered on the wall next to the opening. Her stomach turned over as she read the sign.

_Magically contaminated zone_, it read. _No entry by order of the Witchfinder Office_.

Hermione stood in silence for a few moments, trying to remind herself that she was in some kind of hallucination.

'I thought I heard voices from inside,' she said suddenly, almost without thinking.

'Of course you did,' said the policeman. 'Any wizards they caught in there are quarantined inside to protect the public.'

She was about to reply when the scene before her dissolved and she found herself back inside the shop, Lillian Herrick standing next to her again.

'Did you enjoy the show?'

Hermione caught a glimpse of the look of triumph on Lillian's face before she looked away. She couldn't bring herself to answer. Lillian locked her arm in hers and guided her back into the middle of the empty shop.

'You recognised the streets out there of course,' she said.

'Yes, they were done up to look like Diagon Alley,' Hermione replied. She knew there was no point in feigning ignorance.

'What's left of it,' remarked Lillian drily.

'This is what you would like to happen,' said Hermione. 'But it can't come true.'

'You don't believe that. This isn't a fantasy, but a premonition.'

'That means there's still time to change it.'

'Maybe. You'll have to see if you can. This is only the first gate, of course.'

'The first?' Hermione replied, her mind quickly extrapolating from what Lillian was hinting at.

'The most obvious one.'

'So you mean there are others.'

'That's right.'

'And that's the game? Making me try and find them?'

'Actually I'm perfectly willing to give you their locations.'

'What?'

'It would take far too long to send you off trying to find them. Even for you, Hermione. And who would come and help you?'

Hermione looked away for a moment.

'Why make life harder for yourself?' said Hermione, turning back to face her.

'Why give you the chance to put security at the gates, you mean? There are plenty of reasons.'

'Well, you do like a challenge after all.'

'I do like a challenge, but can you gather enough support to place sufficient protection over all the gates?'

'I suppose it depends how many there are.'

'It doesn't just depend on that, as you know.'

It was true. She didn't know of any charm that could patch up random holes in the separation between the magical and non-magical, and she could hardly summon much support among other wizards.

'But I'll give you the number. It's a number I'm particularly fond of.'

'Let me guess: seven.'

She smiled almost modestly.

'What was it you once said?' remarked Hermione. 'For every genuine clue you throw out a dozen false ones.'

'It would be too easy otherwise,' said Lillian, her face closer to Hermione's. 'And I know how much you love a good puzzle. But yes, I've found seven.'

'Seven gates to the wizarding world,' Hermione replied, thinking out loud. 'And I suppose your little circle has seven people in it.'

'That was an easy one to guess, Hermione. You get no extra points for that.'

'And you mean to show me the other gates, the lost ones?'

'Yes. But you'll have to give me something in return.'

'What do you mean?'

'Every time you give me something of yours I'll send one of my messengers to show you the next gate.'

'What is it you want that belongs to me?' said Hermione warily.

'Oh don't worry about that. I'm not asking you to sacrifice your loved ones or anything like that. You should know that's not my style. No, what I'd like in return for access to each gate is a pint of your blood. That seems much more reasonable.'

'A pint of my blood?' repeated Hermione in a deadpan voice.

'Yes. Whenever the urge to know the location of the next gate gets too much, all you have to do is get in contact with me and I'll send someone to collect payment. Once payment has been made, my messenger will show you the gate. But don't worry: it will all be done under the proper conditions: sterilised needles and the like.'

'Why my blood?' said Hermione in the same ironic, almost amused tone. 'What are you going to do with it?'

'Your blood is merely an arbitrary unit of measurement. I haven't decided yet what I'm going to do with it. You're not one of these people with a fear of needles, I suppose? I wouldn't worry too much if I were you. I know all about giving blood, and there's nothing to it. You regenerate quickly.'

'And how do I know you won't poison me?' Hermione's voice betrayed no emotion.

'Because I'm your protector, Hermione. You have nothing to fear from me. I thought you knew that by now. And more than that, I'm really curious to learn what choices you're going to make. I'm more interested in that than anything. Or almost anything. That's really the best card you hold, Hermione. I don't mind telling you that.'

'If that's the case,' replied Hermione, her voice as low as that of her interlocutor, 'then I'll be keeping it close to my chest.'

They contemplated each other in silence.

'Ok,' said Hermione finally. 'I agree to your bargain.'

Lillian smiled.

'I'm not charging for the first gate by the way. Think of it as a free sample.'

'Maybe I'll work the others out on my own.'

Lillian seemed to laugh silently at this.

'Maybe, Hermione.'

'You won't win this war,' said Hermione.

'What war?' replied Lilian, turning back for a moment. 'This isn't about war; it's just about bringing down walls. That's always a good thing, isn't it? The trumpets will sound and the gates will open.'

'And then what?' Hermione murmured.

Lillian smiled her scintillating smile of triumph.

'Who knows? Everyone will meet in the dance.'

Then she was gone, along with Leftwich's. Hermione was back on the floor of her office, papers still scattered around her. She scrambled up and switched the light on. No sound was coming from down the corridor. From the clock she could see it was some way past midnight.


	29. The vigilance of Hermione Granger - Ch 7

7\. The missing person

_It's far too far from here to the door_.

Harry Potter reached out his hand, contemplated it rather uselessly then dropped it back down on the desk. Beyond the edge of the desk nearly all of the office was filled with empty space. _This is such a ridiculously large office._ He shook his head for no particular reason and set about putting his signature to the first of a pile of documents. The signature wrote itself on the page simply enough, but the charm that performed the act still had to be cast each time. A rhythm quickly imposed itself.

He had been through perhaps twenty when the sensation hit him. First the quill pen dropped lifelessly onto the desk, the charm no longer powering it. The next moment he scarcely saw the desk, or even the office. But he wasn't plunged into darkness. This was no loss of consciousness, seizure or hallucination. No headache either. Instead there was only clarity. An ashen clarity. Cold and slightly damp, and a taste of earth in his mouth. Although he couldn't see them, he felt that there must be trees around him and the sky above him. _Don't let me leave here_.

But the sensation passed, quickly he supposed, as they never seemed to last long. He sat perfectly still at his desk and listened. Footsteps echoed in the corridor outside, passing unseen from right to left then dwindling to silence.

A tautness returned to his body and he sprang to his feet. _I must speak to Kingsley_. The walk from the Auror Office to the Minister's office was short: ministers of magic had always wanted Aurors close to them, as if they were some kind of personal bodyguard. He was soon off his corridor and crossing the interstitial area that served as a kind of waiting room for the Minister's precincts. At present the sofas were empty: the Minister apparently had no appointments waiting.

The Ministerial corridor was short, with the Minister's office wrapping around the end of it. The Minister did not employ a private office; the only person in his staff, so to speak, was Vantricia, his assistant. It would be necessary to pass by her before dropping in on the Minister.

'Good morning, Harry,' she said, glancing up from her desk. 'If you want to speak to the Minister he has no one with him at the moment.'

Vantricia Bellu sat rather regally on her high-backed, intricately carved wooden chair that was famous around the Ministry. She wore a long, sweeping red dress and her long, centre-parted grey-flecked hair hung down in two waves on either side of her long face. She was thought to be somewhere between 50 and 60, but she had allegedly been in that age range for decades. _I feel quite certain that everything will run smoothly while Vantricia is around_, Kingsley had told him, not long after he had brought her into the Ministry to be his assistant. _I know her from way back_, he had said. _She has no time for politics and she keeps a frighteningly efficient office_.

'You will need to be quick, however,' she added in her husky voice, her black eyes scrutinising Harry. 'I expect Myra Tremayne within the next quarter of an hour.'

'I'll be quick,' he concurred from his station at the door. 'How are you, by the way, Vantricia?'

She rolled her eyes and made a dismissive gesture with her hand. 'The usual, Harry.'

'Oh good. Pleased to hear it.'

'I wouldn't waste your fifteen minutes talking to me, my dear,' she added, the hint of a smile on her lips.

'Fair enough. Sorry,' Harry replied, ducking out of Vantricia's office.

'Is this to say welcome back?'

Kingsley was up quickly from behind his desk, but crossed the office rather stiffly as he came over to greet Harry.

'Two days early too,' Harry replied as he shook Kingsley's hand.

'I know,' said Kingsley, smiling. 'I expect Myra shortly to tell me off for rushing back to work.'

'Well, I won't keep you,' said Harry. 'There's just one thing I wanted to talk to you about. I'll make it quick.'

'You don't have to make it so quick as that, Harry,' Kingsley replied, gesturing to him to take a chair and returning behind his desk. 'First of all, how are the prisoners?'

'Quiet,' Harry replied. 'Not very responsive.'

'They're being treated humanely though, I hope? The Dementors kept at a distance?'

'Yes, the charms holding them in place are all working fine.'

'And the latest arrival?'

'Acting like he was on some sort of holiday, so I hear. Behaving almost like he's …'

'Innocent, Harry?'

'Yeah, something like that. There wasn't enough evidence to charge him, but it doesn't mean he's innocent. I mean I can't believe he didn't know what was going on. He knows everything that goes on in his organisation.'

Kingsley leaned back in his chair.

'He certainly does. And there's really no way of getting him out of there?'

'Strangely enough, no.'

'Well I suppose he's happy for the time being. We'll have to interrogate them very soon.'

'We were just waiting for you to get back.'

'Thanks Harry, but I'm sure you would have done fine on your own.'

Harry shook his head instinctively.

'Maybe after a while in Azkaban he'll get sick of playing the innocent.'

'Maybe. He's not a well man, and I'm sure he has no intention of dying there.'

Kingsley paused, a pained expression on his face. He raised his hand to his head then quickly put it back down and looked again at Harry, the previous expression gone.

'You alright?' asked Harry.

'Absolutely,' replied Kingsley. '80% back to normal. That's not too bad, and certainly well enough to be back in the office. Anyway, what was it you wanted to talk to me about?'

'It's just a strange thing I witnessed the other day.'

'What was that?' asked Kingsley, leaning forward in his chair.

'A wizard selling his wand. To a Muggle I mean.'

Kingsley's expression was hard to read.

'And did the Muggle know he was getting the genuine article?'

Harry hesitated. He had to be careful not to implicate Armin.

'I didn't see the final buyer. I just saw the seller and the intermediary. But the intermediary was trying to sell it to interested Muggles. I got the impression that the interest in it was because it was genuine.'

'And the seller, why was he selling his wand?'

'Said he wasn't any good at magic and didn't need it.'

'So rather than hand it in, he preferred to sell it?'

'That's right. Declared it as lost.'

'Have you spoken to Mortimer Knott about this?'

_Mortimer Knott won't take this seriously_.

'He might think it should just be reported to wand collection.'

'He might at that. And if you have the wizard's name, they'll be in a small amount of trouble for falsely declaring their wand lost. So what in particular worries you about this?'

'The potential violation of secrecy for one thing.'

'Did you see a wizard giving a demonstration of magic to prove the wand was authentic?'

'No. I didn't.'

Kingsley smiled.

'You don't mind me playing devil's advocate, do you, Harry? I can see this incident bothers you. I just can't quite see why yet, though I admit it is rather strange. And, I'm afraid, a little bit a sign of the times.'

'I know,' said Harry. 'That part of it worries me the most.'

'It's going to be difficult heading off that problem,' said Kingsley. 'To be honest we don't have a strategy yet. Till now it never occurred to me that a wizard would just lose interest in magic.'

_I know someone it occurred to, but no one's listening to her anymore_.

'Mortimer does have someone working on it,' Kingsley continued. 'I asked him to myself. But I fear it's going to be a long …'

Suddenly the door opened. Harry wheeled round in his seat, just in time to see Myra Tremayne breezing across the office floor, heading for Kingsley's desk.

'Kingsley, so good to have you back!' she exclaimed. 'I feel like we're back on course already … Hello Harry, how are you?'

'Fine thanks, Myra,' Harry replied, getting to his feet and starting to vacate his chair.

'Oh I'm sorry, I'm interrupting something,' Myra continued, looking contritely at Harry. 'Harry, please don't get up on my behalf. I just wanted to welcome Kingsley back.'

'That's all Harry was doing, Myra,' said Kingsley, smiling broadly.

'Yes, well I would have come sooner, but I had to give a statement to the press,' Myra replied breezily. 'We have to get Gondulph Belhaine out of Azkaban. Someone from the Prophet just asked me if I think he's a political prisoner.'

She looked slightly askance at Harry.

'Or else the Auror Office needs to find evidence so that we can officially charge him.'

'We're not there yet,' Harry began.

'Do you really think he wasn't involved, Harry?' Myra asked. Her tone remained friendly, but with a trace of annoyance in it.

'I don't know. But we're working on it.'

'Is it really not possible for you to go over to Azkaban and drag him out of there?'

He almost smiled at the oddness of the situation.

'Even if we could,' Harry replied, reigning in the smile, 'it could get very nasty. He's got some sort of connection to the Dementors'

'And anyway, there's nothing in the wizarding statute that would allow it,' Kingsley remarked.

'I know there's nothing in there,' Myra replied. 'Our legal team has been through every last piece of wizarding law since the time of Godric Gryffindor himself. Belhaine obviously knew there was nothing there either.'

'And he knows we can hardly pass a new law just for his benefit,' Kingsley added.

'Do you really think anyone would care in the long run, Kingsley?' murmured Myra.

'I won't allow it,' Kingsley replied.

Myra smiled resignedly but Harry could hear her tapping her foot.

'Is there anything else, Myra?' Kingsley asked. _He's having to make an effort to stay calm. Who can blame him?_

'Just to mention the backlog of postponed meetings and Wizengamot hearings. Can we reschedule for this week?'

'Yes, that's fine,' said Kingsley, rubbing his neck and wincing slightly.

'Wonderful,' Myra replied, briskly twirling a long, curled strand of blonde hair. 'The assistants can work out the details.'

'I'll speak to Vantricia in just a moment.'

'Um … I'd better be going,' said Harry, finally grasping his chance to re-enter the conversation long enough to get out of it and get back to work.

'Thanks, Harry,' Myra replied, all sweetness again, then quickly turning back to Kingsley.

'Uh, let me know what you think about that … thing I mentioned earlier,' Harry said.

'I will, Harry, I will,' Kingsley replied. But his voice sounded distracted and his hand was at his temple again.

On his way back to his office he was accosted by Will Gash, Mortimer Knott's assistant, who insisted on accompanying him to the Auror Office. Harry humoured Gash's conversation about quidditch results and the activities of the old Gryffindorians society, of which he was treasurer and Mortimer Knott chairman. As they turned a corner, he caught sight of Hermione down the far end of the corridor. She was standing by the entrance to a stairwell, listening gravely to Argenta Coyle, who was holding open the stairwell door as she explained something to her. Harry paused for a moment. As he did, Hermione turned her head and glanced his way, before quickly turning back to Argenta.

'Shame about her,' muttered Will Gash.

'What do you mean, shame?' Harry asked.

'You don't mind me speaking frankly, do you Harry?' said Gash in his usual chummy manner.

'Not at all.'

'I have great respect for her,' Gash continued. 'And you know far better than I do how important a role she played in defeating Voldemort.'

'I do,' Harry concurred.

'But she seems to have lost some of her previously excellent judgement. And it doesn't seem to be a temporary thing, I'm sorry to say.'

'No, it's not a temporary thing,' Harry replied in a guarded tone.

'I think I had the impression that the two of you aren't so close any more,' Gash continued.

'Well …' Harry began. 'Things have changed …'

Gash wisely chose not to dig any deeper on that point.

'Still, maybe you have more influence on her than others.'

'Influence her?' asked Harry. 'What about?'

'I'm sure you know what I mean,' said Gash, lowering his voice. 'This business with witchfinders, with Muggles being out to get wizards. It really goes down very badly over in Muggle Relations. Even now, there she is, with Argenta Coyle. I'm sorry to say this, but she's partly responsible for the popularity of Citadel. Some people still take her seriously.'

Harry listened in silence, looking at Gash with a furrowed brow. _Keep on like that and I may have to knock your teeth out. Old Gryffindorian or otherwise_.

Finally he gave Gash a bleak, resigned sort of look.

'I don't think I'd be able to exert that kind of influence, Will.'

Gash squinted at Harry, apparently weighing up his last statement.

'Like I said, I'm sorry to mention it,' he replied. 'I just wish she was fighting the right battles. We need people with her intellectual prowess on our side. What with this attack on the Minister, we're in worrying times.'

Harry nodded stiffly. The stairwell door was closed and Hermione and Argenta had gone from it.

'You're right about that,' he replied.

The quill jumped impatiently off his desk and back into the air, seemingly reproaching him for the lack of progress on the paperwork. He sat down at his desk and put the quill back to work, to its apparent satisfaction. _We've done what we set out to do. Half the Ministry knows_. Fifteen documents in he let go of the quill and looked away into space. _But why did I get the easy job_?

They had taken up their roles as quickly as they could after the return to the Burrow, but at a pace that would make the change imperceptible to the others. There was no bust-up, no specific reason for it, just an ever increasing immersion in each other's own life. _Just two people growing apart as they grow up_, was how Hermione had phrased it.

Ginny had been the first to notice. About three months had passed and things were nearly back to normal. _Had something happened?_ Not at all: he had just been putting his priorities straight. And it was true, or rather, that was almost all of it. Apart from that one little thing, which never went away. And the more that silence filled the gap, the more convincing the gap appeared, in particular to the two of them. It really had been one look a year. And increasingly there were no circumstances in which there could be anything else.

He remembered one particular moment, about a year earlier as it happened, not long after she and Ron had moved to Chase End. The normal pattern was already in place: Hermione alone in her office, he and Ron knocking about the house, which was a bit too big for two people anyway. Ron had gone out to the garage to look for something; Harry had drifted up the stairs, lingering on the landing, unsure whether to knock on her door or scuttle back downstairs.

'Can I come in?' he said.

'Of course,' she replied in a low, sedated sort of voice. She was sitting at her desk, scribbling on one of the many sheets of paper spread out there. He went up to her.

'It must be really hard,' he said, gesturing at her work.

Her gaze was piercing.

'It's much harder than I ever thought.'

He paused, trying to decide which way to turn the conversation.

'You're putting yourself in danger.' He knew something of the risks she was taking. He reached out his hand and touched her on the arm. 'And I just stand back and do nothing.'

Still looking at him, she put her hand on his. Her skin felt cold.

'You're just keeping your side of the pact.'

'If I'm keeping my side of the pact how come I feel like I'm cheating you?'

The next moment she was up out of her chair and throwing her arms around him.

'I can't bear this,' he whispered as he wrapped her arms around her.

She pulled out of the embrace, taking her arms from around his neck and grabbing hold of his hand instead, guiding it to her left wrist. Her hand closed around his, pressing it against her skin.

'I never take it off,' she whispered into his ear. 'So don't say you're not doing anything.'

Ron's voice seemed to carry up the stairs, calling for Harry. Harry glanced round at the door.

'Go, go,' said Hermione, backing away behind her desk. He stood still, unable to move.

'Please close the door when you leave,' she said, in as mundane a tone as he had ever heard. 'I'm going to cry now, Harry, and I don't want anyone to hear me.'

* * *

The only light in the living room came from the television. A teenaged girl stared at them from the screen, the pale outline of a church tower in the dark behind her. Her hair was blowing in the wind and her eyes gleamed with anger and concentration. She raised her hand in front of her, her fingers outstretched. A ball of fire glowed in her palm and shot forward in the darkness. The camera cut to a suburban house, probably North American, just at the moment when the fireball struck it, blasting out the windows and immediately setting the house on fire. The girl stared at the burning house, a look of studied menace on her face. '_Now they'll notice me_,' she said in a low, sulky voice, evidently satisfied at the destruction she had caused.

'Oh no! She's a witch!' Ron Weasley shouted, rocking back in his seat and laughing.

'That'll teach them to mess with one of us,' Ginny added from the sofa, an amused grin on her face too.

Harry smiled to himself and shook his head. Friday night had become film night at Ron's house. His preferred film choices were fantasy films, particularly films involving magic. Harry had to admit that there was a kind of appeal to seeing magic in the numerous forms imagined for it by Muggles.

'Actually, Hermione can do that spell rather well,' Ron added, stuffing his hand into a bowl of crisps.

Hermione was not in the room. She was undoubtedly upstairs in what tended to get called her 'office', surrounded by a mass of papers and old manuscripts. She had come down for about ten minutes when Harry and Ginny had arrived and made a little conversation, but had politely declined the invitation to watch the film Ron was proposing for the evening's entertainment.

Mrs Weasley didn't allow television at the Burrow, but once Ron had set himself up in his own house, he had been free to install a wide-screen television in his living room. He had also brought the old Muggle games console from the Burrow. Harry sometimes received an invite to join him and George for Saturday afternoon gaming sessions.

'Get us another beer, would you, Harry?' said Ron as he pointed the remote control at the television.

'Sure,' Harry replied, getting up.

'Do you want a beer too?' he asked Ginny.

'No thanks,' she replied. 'But I think I saw some cranberry juice in the fridge.'

'Gotcha,' he replied. He walked out of the living room and through the open door into the kitchen.

As he reached into the fridge he heard footsteps beyond him. Instinctively he wheeled around, drawing his wand, even though the chances of being attacked in Ron's house were ridiculously low. He found himself staring at Hermione. Her face was serious and pale in the half-light.

'Good to know your instincts are just as sharp as always,' she commented in the distant tone he had been used to hearing for the past two years.

'Well, I don't like to get complacent,' he replied, immediately adopting the same tone.

'Quite right.' She spoke clearly and deliberately, easily loud enough to be heard in the other room.

He was sure he saw a flicker of something in her eyes and the ghost of a smile flash across her face.

'Sure you don't want to come and watch this film?' he asked, his gaze flitting onto the open door.

'No thank you.'

'Why not?' _Probably not a good idea to ask, but still _…

Her eyes narrowed slightly. It could be that he was taking this a bit far.

'Maybe they're a kind of escapism for you,' she replied. 'But they put me on edge.'

'Ah, they're just a bit of harmless fun.'

'I'm glad that's how they are to you.'

'We could always find something else to watch.'

She shot him a brief, uncomprehending look.

'That won't be necessary.'

The can of beer was making his hand very cold. He quickly switched it with the carton of cranberry juice in his other hand.

For a moment her gaze was unswerving and unchanged. Then she looked away.

'Enjoy the film,' she added nonchalantly, before backing away and heading quickly back to the stairs.

He remained in the still dark kitchen for a few moments, his heart suddenly beating fast.

'Harry, have you got those drinks?' Ron's voice came booming through from the living room.

'Yeah, I've got them.'

They lived in different counties: Harry and Ginny closer to London, Ron and Hermione further west, although distance was hardly a barrier to their meeting.

The flat in London held memories that neither Harry nor Ginny wanted to revisit. Moving back to Grimmauld Place had never seemed like an option, so instead they had taken on a large house on the edge of a small market town. Hermione and Ron were renting a house in a secluded Muggle hamlet. Ron had become increasingly expert at blending in with Muggle society and made scarcely any faux pas when interacting with his neighbours. Harry would often meet Ron in his local, an ancient coaching inn a mile or so away in the next village. They would walk back by night along country lanes to Ron's house, their raised voices and laughter carrying into the silence that surrounded them. Sometimes Harry would apparate home from Ron's front door, other times he would come in for a last drink. But Hermione was rarely to be seen on such occasions. _Sometimes she doesn't even notice when I go in there_, he remembered Ron saying. _She's just staring at a point on the wall, like she's in a trance or something_.

'Did Hermione come down?' asked Ron. 'Thought I heard her in the kitchen talking to you.'

'Yeah, she came down,' he replied, looking straight at him. 'I asked her if she wanted to watch the film. She didn't.'

'No surprise there,' said Ron glumly.

He sat down next to Ginny and put their drinks down on the coffee table in front of them. Then he threw a can of beer over the table to Ron, who caught it effortlessly and cracked it open with a flourish. Then he settled down next to Ginny. As Ron restarted the film, he slipped his arm around her.

* * *

'I have to speak to you.'

The words woke him immediately. He sat up in bed and looked around him, his eyes blinking rapidly as they adjusted to the dim light there. _Hermione_. Sitting edgily on the red armchair in the corner of the bedroom, legs and arms crossed. She was dressed all in black, as if she actually wanted to look like a burglar.

Her face was deathly serious.

'I know I shouldn't be doing this.'

He glanced down at the place next to him in bed. Ginny was asleep on her side, facing away from him, her red hair splayed over her pillow and partly onto his.

'Don't worry, she won't wake up,' said Hermione. 'This is a dream you're having, to all intents and purposes.'

'A dream you've conjured up. Using the Circle,' he replied, his voice still low, as if he still feared waking Ginny.

'Yes,' said Hermione.

'So you've mastered it.'

Her eyes flashed in the dark.

'Yes. More or less.'

'Is this really a good idea?' he asked.

'No,' she replied. 'I already said it isn't. But this is too important. _She's_ moving. There's no more time to lose. It's time to break our pact.'

He exhaled deeply. _Is it wrong to be happy about this_?

'Yes, it is wrong,' she replied, apparently reading his thoughts. 'But I'm happy about it too.'

The words made him smile. He could see her trying not to smile back at him.

'So Lillian Herrick's ready?' he asked.

She nodded.

'Only now she has helpers too. Others who can use the Circle.'

He thought back to what had happened two years earlier.

'A lot of people are going to have their barriers removed.'

'Yes, a lot of people are going to be helped to have what they want. If people want to wallow in complacency, let them. If they want to spend all their time worrying about Gondulph Belhaine and none of it worrying about Messrs Morley and Marchelow, let them.' She paused for a moment to draw breath before continuing. 'If they want to cheat on their friends, let them.'

He looked at her more closely. Her brow was furrowed, her eyes opaque, her mouth taut.

'What is it you want us to do?'

'I don't know yet. I don't know enough about anything yet. All I know so far is that there are weaknesses in the magical protection that keeps wizards hidden, weaknesses that she plans to exploit. There are seven of them, apparently, if she's to be believed.'

'Weaknesses?' said Harry.

'Holes,' replied Hermione. 'But she's going to show them to me.'

'Show them to you?'

'Does that surprise you, Harry? Don't you remember she likes playing games more than anything else? Especially games that involve me. And _you_, for that matter.'

He could swear that her eyes glinted in the dark as she spoke.

'You've been through too much on your own,' he said.

'I know,' she replied, almost amused at the idea. 'It shows on my face.'

'I don't think so.'

'You needn't go soft on me, Harry. I know I look more like my heroin chic evil twin every day And the fact that I'm here in your room is possibly already a sign that I've crossed some lines that shouldn't be crossed.'

'You are behaving a bit odd,' he said, half regretting the disclosure. 'It's like you're tempting me and warning me not to trust you at the same time.'

'It's for your own good. You have to stay on your toes from now on. You never know who might be listening, or trying to meddle.'

_I want to believe it's really Hermione. I suppose that makes me vulnerable._

'What's that over there?' she said, suddenly leaning forward, her gaze pointed at a spot to his left. He looked around, following her gaze. She was looking at his bedside cabinet, more specifically at the little pile of books that sat there. Something thin and white was poking out from between the last and second to last books in the pile. Almost without thinking, he reached over and pulled out whatever was wedged between the books. An envelope slid into his hands. It was addressed _To Harry_. In Hermione's handwriting.

'Careful, Harry, doesn't that strike you as suspicious?' she said, her face inscrutable. 'Doesn't it remind you of something I once did?'

'Yes it does,' he replied. 'But would she know about that?'

'She knows about it,' Hermione confirmed grimly. 'Even though memories are harder to unlock than emotions and desires.'

'You think I should destroy this?' he asked.

'I don't know. But I think it's more likely to be something that's meant for you to read, whether what's in there is meant to do good or to do harm. Put it this way: I don't think it's going to explode or anything.'

'That's probably true,' he replied. After pausing for another moment, he tore open the envelope. Inside were two things: a note and a small metal object. He tipped the envelope over and the object fell out onto the bedside cabinet with a dull metallic thump. It was a simple silver ring. Not taking his eyes off the ring, he slipped the note out of the envelope and opened it. The note was in Hermione's handwriting. _But I suppose that could easily be forged_.

'What does it say?' she asked in a low voice, her voice cracking slightly.

He began to read out loud.

'_Dear Harry, by now you should be pretty suspicious. Would I really be so brazen as to sneak into your bedroom at night while Ginny's asleep and tell you I want to break our pact?_'

He looked up at her.

'Well, would I?' she asked plaintively, her eyes burning into him.

He continued to read.

'_The fact that Lillian Herrick is moving against us should now be indisputably clear, proven either by my telling you so in person or else by someone going to the trouble of impersonating me_. _Either way, you have every reason to be suspicious, including of the person sitting across from you in your bedroom_.'

Instinctively he looked up. She seemed quite unperturbed.

'Please keep reading,' was all she said.

'_Nevertheless, I have to try and prove to you that I'm genuine. The real Hermione wrote this letter and the real Hermione is sitting just across from you, taking a terrible liberty in doing so, which I'm really sorry about. I'm sorry to you and sorry to Ginny. It won't happen again. By now I will have asked you to break our pact, but that was a __simulation_ _of what Lillian Herrick might have said if she was the one who arranged all this. I may have come across as slightly deranged tonight, as if two years spent studying the Seven-Pointed Circle has driven me mad. But I'm not mad, Harry, not yet at least! Most of what I will have told you up to the point where I reveal this letter to you has been an attempt to show you what it might be like for Lillian to try and impersonate me in order to speak to you. She didn't, but it's all too possible that she's watching, and possibly enjoying the spectacle. Please don't try and speak to me in the waking world. It wouldn't be right. Even now. Isn't it obvious to you that Lillian Herrick wants us to break the pact, even for the noble aim of fighting her?' _

_By the way, you probably still shouldn't be convinced that I'm genuine_.'

He looked up, almost in vain, he thought. Hermione's expression gave nothing away.

'_Let me tell you about that ring. Of all the suspicious things done tonight, that must be the most flagrant. What wizard wouldn't be suspicious of a ring sent to them in an envelope? Even though I'm telling you now that it belonged to my grandmother, that still shouldn't be enough to convince you. Memories are hard to get at, but not impossible, and certainly not for her. But I think there's one thing I can tell you to convince that it's really me speaking to you. Here goes: keep the ring for me, Harry. It makes us even. I think you take my meaning. _

_All my love, Hermione_

_PS that stuff I told you about holes in the separation between the magical and non-magical worlds is true.'_

He looked up slowly. She looked nervously at him. It was a look he recognised. He smiled at her and she smiled back at him.

'The next time you see me,' she said, 'it would be useful if you could find some way of showing the ring to me. Just for an instant. Then I'll know that I successfully managed to pass it to you through the Circle.'

He nodded.

'I have one question: is the Seven-Pointed Circle more powerful than our magic, do you think?'

'I don't know. I never thought about it that way. But in the hands of Lillian Herrick and her helpers, it's particularly dangerous.'

'And we still can't work together on this?'

She shook her head vigorously.

'She wants us to work together. _Connivance_, that's what she would call it. But quite apart from that, it would be wrong. I've muddied the waters enough just by coming here tonight and doing this.'

'I understand,' he said sadly. 'But isn't it possible this is all too paranoid? It's going to come to an open fight sooner or later.'

She nodded then chewed on her lower lip.

'It will when it has to. Goodnight, Harry.'

The next instant she was gone, the letter and the envelope too. He looked down at his bedside cabinet. The silver ring still lay there. He picked it up and held it up to the light between his forefinger and thumb. Then he reached down and slid it into the cabinet drawer, safely beneath a piece of paper.


	30. The vigilance of Hermione Granger - Ch 8

8\. Defenceless Muggles

'_Very good_, she told me to tell you.'

Hermione looked up from the papers strewn on her desk. It was deep in the night by then.

Standing in front of her, silent and motionless, was a dark-haired young woman, her vaguely oriental eyes black and mournful.

'Are you one of them?' Hermione asked coolly, getting up from her desk.

'Why else would I be here?'

'I asked to see a gate,' Hermione said. 'I'm ready to pay.'

'And I'm here to carry out the transaction,' replied the girl. 'And to pass on Lillian's best wishes. She enjoyed your little preemptive strike and congratulates you for it. She says that as usual you haven't disappointed her.'

'Why doesn't she come here and tell me herself?'

The girl smirked.

'Oh, I think she wants you to get to know all of us. See what a nice little group we are.'

'Will that persuade me to join you or something?'

'We'll see.'

Hermione eyed her coldly.

'I want to see that gate,' she reiterated.

'Fine, we'll get it over with quick,' said the girl, as she made her way slowly and deliberately around the room, smiling as she scrutinised the sketches on the walls and glanced over the papers on Hermione's desk. Hermione stood rooted to the spot, following her round the room with her gaze.

'_The circle constricts so I may breathe_,' said the girl, leaning over Hermione's desk and reading aloud from a page scattered there. 'That's a nice way of putting it.'

At last she completed her inspection.

'So it's true,' she said. 'You did work it all out on your own. I guess all the praise being heaped on you is deserved after all.'

'I don't know anything about any praise, and I'm not sure I want it anyway,' replied Hermione. 'But since you seem to know all about me already, maybe you might tell me your name. Just as a courtesy.'

The girl looked at her flatly.

'I could tell you any old name.'

'Are you afraid that we'll find you, out in the real world?' Hermione replied quickly. 'Maybe you're not so happy in your little group as you make out. Perhaps we'll bring you back.'

'Bring me back where?' said the girl.

'Back to normality,' replied Hermione.

'Like you, you mean?' remarked the girl with a snigger.

'Point taken.'

'As far as I understand,' continued the girl in a sardonic tone, as she advanced towards Hermione with a syringe suddenly visible in her hand, 'you wizards want to stop us so you can remain hidden. That hardly seems fair. Why should you get to stay hidden?'

'I don't have any justification for it. But we're not going to let you bring down the walls just for entertainment.'

'You use your magic so blithely,' said the girl. 'You take it for granted, just like the protection around you.'

'You're only half right,' Hermione replied. 'If you treat it like that, you'll never control it properly. Such a person would only ever be half a wizard.'

The girl smirked.

'You're not speaking from your own experience, of course.'

'No, I'm not.'

'And now you think you've mastered our little art as well.'

'I'm getting there. Now I know how hard you worked to attain it.'

Suddenly the girl shot out her free hand and grabbed Hermione by the arm. Her hand was cold and her grasp firm. She drew closer to Hermione, scrutinising her features.

'I can see the circle around you already. But at the same time, it's terribly far away from you. If you truly close it, then your eyes will be fully opened.'

'And then I can be one of you, is that it?' replied Hermione in a low voice, throwing off her grasp.

'You can try.'

Hermione stared at her defiantly, reaching for her gaze.

'I'm not interested.'

The girl smiled again. Hermione felt her almost physically pushing away her gaze.

'You say that,' said the girl. 'But I'm here tonight because you're so desperate that you're prepared to sell your own blood to us.'

'I'm just following the rules of the game.'

'Well, we'll have to see how well you play.'

There seemed to be no more point in continuing the conversation.

'In that case we'd better get on with it,' Hermione said.

'Good,' said the girl. 'Lie down then.'

Hermione obeyed, stretching herself out on the floor. The girl kneeled down over her, syringe in hand. The syringe was connected to an empty blood bag that lay next to her on the floor.

'Ready?' she said.

Hermione nodded. The girl took up the syringe and punctured Hermione's arm. The act was almost painless, and Hermione lay on the floor and closed her eyes, waiting as her blood flowed out. She opened her eyes briefly at intervals, glancing across at the gradually filling blood bag and up at the girl's impassive face. She kept her eyes closed until finally she heard the girl whisper _it's done_. She opened her eyes and lifted her head slightly. To her surprise, she felt no weakness or disorientation. The girl stood over her, the syringe and the blood bag gone. She reached out her hands and Hermione allowed her to pull her to her feet.

'Have you taken full payment?' asked Hermione.

'Yes,' replied the girl nonchalantly. 'Are you ready to see the second gate?'

Hermione nodded. The girl led her to the door of the room. She opened the door and they stepped through, not onto the landing of Hermione's house, but onto grass. Hermione looked around and found herself before a farmhouse that stood in isolation on a forested hill. The wind whipped through the trees that almost surrounded the house, which was accessed only by a narrow lane that snaked down the hill, overgrown on either side. In the distance she could see a series of bracken-covered hills rising ever higher, the tallest capped with snow. Some of the hills looked familiar to her. The house seemed deserted, but the grounds were churned up by vehicle tracks, and trenches had been dug in random places around the building, attesting to recent activity. A nameplate was mounted by the side of the semi-rotten front door. It read _Pendle House_.

'Until recently this was even more of a ruin,' said the girl, who was watching as Hermione scanned the desolate, ramshackle building before them. 'No one has lived in it for years. Not that many people would want to live in a place so isolated, especially one built on a spot local people associate with witchcraft.'

'And this is the second gate?' said Hermione.

'We're nearly there.'

She led her to the back of the house, to an area where straggly, wind-bowed trees descended down a steep incline. Between two trees with tangled branches, a narrow, rutted path was just visible winding its way down the slope. Hermione went up to one of the trees marking the entrance to the path. Carved into the bark she could just make out some runes. They read: _This is where witches walk_.

'The path leads through the mountains,' said the girl. 'The local name for it is _Witches' March_. It's funny: you'd think superstition has no foundation in fact. But sometimes, old wives tales remember what even wizards forget. Do you know where it leads to?'

Hermione looked again at the runes and the path that led away under the trees.

'All the passages into Hogwarts have been identified,' she said finally.

'You're right,' replied the girl, 'but this is a passage that leads eventually through the forest and from there into the grounds of Hogwarts. It's very scenic, but quite treacherous, especially when the weather's bad, which it usually is in these hills. It's much easier to follow when you're out of your own body, so to speak.'

'It seems unlikely that Muggles would use it to enter the wizarding world, then, ' remarked Hermione.

'I wouldn't assume anything if I were you,' replied the girl.

As she spoke, the hillside and the farmhouse disappeared. They were back in Hermione's room.

'You'll feel the effects of the blood loss when you wake up in your physical body,' said the girl in a matter-of-fact voice, as if she had carried out countless such operations.

'Yes,' Hermione remarked drily, 'this much fun always comes at a price. Am I supposed to say thank you or something?'

'It hardly matters,' said the girl. 'Anyway, like you said, this is a game and we're still playing. You can say thank you when the game ends, if you like. Congratulate the victors or something like that. If you're still alive.'

'I thought you were supposed to be against complacency,' Hermione replied.

'You're complacent if you think you can resist us. To stand a better chance you need to lose your innocence. You're rife with it.'

'But by coincidence that would make me nothing more than one of you.'

'Oh yes, so it would.'

The girl laughed. _Is she laughing to try and conceal something_?

Hermione shook her head, tiring of the conversation.

'You've learned your lesson well,' she replied finally. 'What is it that you did to get inside the Circle?'

The girl smiled bleakly.

'More to the point,' she replied, 'what are you going to have to do to keep up with us?

The next moment she was gone, leaving Hermione alone in her room. As soon as she stepped out of the circle she felt dizzy and weak. She struggled across the room, making for the sofa bed. Just moving her limbs was an effort, so she gave up and sat down untidily on the floor. She felt drained of much more than just a pint of her blood. _It's kind of like a contest_. _Will I last long enough to see all of the gates, or will my body give out_? Her head still reeling and her limbs aching, she lay down on her side. She remembered her visit to Harry earlier that night. Her attempts to give Harry a simulation of Lillian Herrick impersonating her struck her as vaguely ridiculous. But she felt more confident nevertheless. _We're not finished yet_. She closed her eyes. This time only sleep awaited her.

* * *

When she opened her eyes Ron was standing over her, a grim expression on his face. A dull ache coursed through her head when she raised it so she allowed it to sink back to the floor. As she looked to the side, she saw a smallish bloodstain on the carpet next to her. Another messy stain decorated her sleeve. She looked up at Ron, who continued to stare at her.

'What are you doing?' he said at last in a choked-off voice.

'I must have fallen asleep,' she replied, trying to sit up but failing.

'On the floor?'

'It was… umm… a difficult night.'

She tried again to pull herself up into a sitting position, and this time managed it. She sat on the floor for a few moments, until the feeling of lightheadedness began to abate. Ron reached out his arm to her, but she was already struggling to her feet.

'Are you ill? Or did you injure yourself?'

She went stiffly over to the table, picked up her wand, and cast an enchantment that made the blood stain on the floor shrink and disappear. Then she did the same for the stain on her sleeve.

'That's nothing. Just a bit of a scratch.'

'You could just have come to bed, you know,' he said, leaning against her desk and looking at her circumspectly. 'You don't have to work until you pass out.'

She tried to look at him but found that she couldn't. She looked around her office. She felt elated, she realised, despite the lightheadedness, and despite the feeling of guilt that had gripped her as soon as she saw Ron. _I can do it_.

'There's a logical explanation for all this,' she said finally.

'Right,' said Ron. 'Can we discuss this somewhere other than under the spider's web?' he added, pointing balefully at the rendering of the Seven-Pointed Circle on the wall.

'Let's go downstairs then,' she replied evenly. 'No spiders there.'

She followed Ron out of the office, along the landing and down the stairs. She had to hold onto the banisters as she went down the stairs. She paused for a moment then went on, hoping he didn't see her hand was shaking.

When they reached the living room she dropped down onto the sofa. Ron sat down on an armchair, looking at her suspiciously.

'You look a right state,' he said. 'You're as white as a vampire.'

She laid her head on the back of the sofa and looked up at the ceiling. _How much should I tell him?_

'Ron,' she began, lowering her head and looking back at him, 'It's starting. I entered the Circle and spoke to her.'

'Her?' said Ron. 'You've been in contact with that Lillian Herrick?'

She nodded.

'Things have been put in motion. She's going to try and expose us. Just for the fun of it.'

Ron looked doubtful.

'How?'

'There are lost entrances to the wizarding world. Chinks in the wall. We've forgotten them but she knows where they are.'

Ron looked at her with a pained expression.

'And you want us to go chasing around the country looking for them?'

'Thanks for the offer, but that's actually sort of the easy part. She's going to show them to me.'

'Oh that's good of her. If only Voldemort could have handed us all the Horcruxes, perhaps we could have defeated him sooner.'

She found herself glaring at him.

'You talk about that as if it was the easiest thing in the world.'

'You know that's not what I mean. I'm just stating the obvious: if Lillian Herrick's going to show you how she's going to get into our world, what's left for you to do?'

It was a fair question. One she couldn't answer satisfactorily.

'Play her game, for the time being.'

'Play her game? Did those bloodstains have anything to do with playing her game, by any chance?'

'In a manner of speaking,' replied Hermione. 'I've reached a sort of agreement with her.'

'What does that mean?'

'Well …,' she began hesitantly. _I know how this will sound_. 'If I want to see one of these lost entrances, I have to give her a pint of my blood. There are seven gates in all.'

'What?!' Ron shrieked, leaping to his feet. 'Have you lost it completely?'

She stayed in her seat.

'Ron, I wouldn't be doing this if I had a choice. Anything I can do to give us a clue of what we're up against, that gives us a chance of defending ourselves, must be worth it.'

_I know I'm clutching at straws._

'Even if that's true, and supposing this Lillian Herrick really is a threat,' replied Ron, and Hermione rolled her eyes in response, 'no listen to me, how come you're making a pact with the enemy? How can that be a good idea?'

She chewed her lower lip.

'It _isn't_ a good idea,' she said plaintively. 'But it's the only idea I've got. Otherwise we're just sleepwalking to oblivion.'

This time it was Ron who was rolling his eyes.

'Here we go again …'

Now Hermione was on her feet too.

'I really can't see why you won't take this threat seriously.'

'I did,' he said in a tone of quiet exasperation. 'We all did. We investigated. Remember? That was two years ago. Do you want us to reopen the investigation? Do you want to have Aurors guard these entrances to our world? If you do, we're going to need some evidence. And some pretty concrete evidence, as we'd have to move people off other cases.'

She folded her arms and contemplated him quietly. _Is this how it works, Lillian? Are you making sure he keeps on feeling important for as long as possible?_

'Well, I'll be sure to make an appointment with the Auror Office when I have some evidence that's good enough for you.'

There was a foggy kind of look about him.

'Evidence that you're buying with your own blood.'

'Yes.'

'But if she's that clever, she could just invent the evidence too,' he remarked.

'That's possible,' she agreed. _It was possible_. 'But it's a risk worth taking.'

'You risk her making a fool of you,' Ron replied. 'I never thought anyone would make a fool of you.'

She shivered for a moment. She realised how cold she felt.

'I'm prepared to be a fool,' she replied in a low voice. 'In front of you … and Harry … and Kingsley. And the rest of the Ministry. I often feel like one anyway. But tell me one thing: do you really believe I'm making this up?'

Ron seemed to squint, as if he was probing the air in front of his nose for something.

'I believe that there's such a person as Lillian Herrick,' he replied. 'Although I've never seen her. And I'm sure she is a complete lunatic. But other than that, she's apparently tapped into some kind of feeble pseudo-magic and now imagines that she's some sort of amazing witch. And what worries me is that you're encouraging her by taking her seriously.'

She listened quietly, an expression of defeat etched onto her face.

'Try trusting me,' she said finally.

He looked at her.

'I want to,' he replied in a calmer voice.

'Well good for you,' she replied, swaying away from the sofa and heading for the stairs. 'Let me know when you manage it.'

Ron watched her grimly as she made her way slowly up the stairs.

* * *

Hermione crossed Clerkenwell Road and headed onto Hatton Garden. _Isaac has some information for you_, Argenta had told her. _How soon can you get to his office?_ Receiving a summons to Isaac's office was rare. She rearranged her work as best she could so that she could slip out of the Ministry. It was nearly noon, and people were spilling out of their offices and into the neighbourhood cafes and bars. Isaac wouldn't be lunching out. It wasn't the sort of thing he did.

She had met Isaac Edwards for the first time about a month before the first sighting of Harry. At that point it had just been to hand over the examples of anti-wizarding graffiti she had been seeing more and more often. No one else was interested in them.

Isaac's office was in a nondescript four-storey building on a side street. She was buzzed in faster than she had expected, and when she reached the door to his office on the top floor it was already open. The room that served as Isaac's office proper lay at the end of a narrow corridor; off to the right was an additional room known as the 'waiting room', though she didn't have the impression that a lot of waiting went on in there. Setting off down the corridor, she was surprised to see the door to the waiting room open as well. Argenta Coyle was sitting inside on the green leatherette sofa put at the disposal of 'clients', a rather glazed expression on her face. She was one of those people who seemed to forever be changing their appearance. The rather severe look she had been wearing the last time they had met had been replaced by a green polo neck jumper and small oval glasses, while her hair swept dramatically down either side of her face and dangled half-way down her chest. With her hair loose, it was clear just how long it actually was. Her mouth was small and her lips pale. They had a perpetual look of deadpan irony about them. But today she looked somehow gentler.

'Hello, what are you doing here?' Hermione asked from the doorway.

Argenta looked across in surprise, her attention apparently distracted from something on the wall behind the door.

'Just admiring my handiwork,' she replied, pointing up at the wall. Hermione leaned round the door to look. Pinned to the wall was a large map of the British Isles, covered with clustered and scattered dots of various colours.

'What is all that?'

'Para-magical occurrences and witchfinder activity,' Argenta replied. 'They're colour-coded for ease of reference.'

'Is there that much para-magical activity in Britain?'

She hoped she didn't sound like she was humouring her. But Argenta gave no sign that she had detected anything in Hermione's tone.

'The red dots stand for real events,' she continued. 'The blue for imaginary ones.'

There were certainly a lot more blue dots than red ones on the map. Hermione's gaze honed in on a cluster of dots seemingly located in the middle of Dorset.

'What happened in Dorset?' she asked.

'Witch hunts.'

'Witch hunts? How many?'

'Six so far. But five out of six have been false alarms.'

'You mean they weren't real wizards being hunted.'

'Exactly.'

'Still, it must have been dreadful for the people on the receiving end.'

'Yes, they may think twice next time before playing at being witches.'

'That doesn't sound very sympathetic.'

Argenta's expression was unchanged.

'I am sympathetic to them. They're unlucky enough to be in Mr Marchelow's sector.'

Hermione shivered at the recollection.

'He's expecting you, by the way,' Argenta added, firing an inscrutable look in the direction of Isaac's office.

'_So you've been collecting anti-wizarding graffiti. Why?' _

_Those had been Isaac Edwards' first words to her the first time they met, as he sat behind his ancient looking desk, the shelves behind him rammed with an assortment of books, folders and ring binders, all gathering dust._

'_I don't know exactly,' she replied, sitting down on one of the two chairs in front of the desk without being invited to. 'It bothers me when I see it and I seem to see it more and more often.'_

_She had laid down her folder on the desk. He quickly took it and started looking through. _

'_Some of these I've seen myself,' he remarked. There was something immeasurably grave about him. Up close he didn't seem to be more than about forty, and he was even quite handsome, in a worn-out sort of way. His eyes seemed to suggest both great weariness and fierce concentration. She had expected him to be rather shabby and dusty, but in fact he was rather smartly dressed, in an old fashioned brown suit with a waistcoat. 'They bother me too,' he said finally._

'_And this is your field, protecting wizards against this?' she ventured._

_He looked up from her folder._

'_It's part of it. Only wizards tend not to think they need protecting against this kind of stuff.' _

'_Why do they call you a witchfinder then?'_

_This drew something between a grimace and a smile. To most wizards, a witchfinder was a ludicrous figure of fun. She couldn't quite see it that way._

'_My field is everything outside your world that intersects with it. That means non-magical people with an interest in magic and the occult; people who believe in magic and fear it, including people who style themselves as witchfinders; but also every kind of magic other than the kind you wield.'_

'_I've heard that there are other kinds,' she remarked, trying to get more comfortable on the hard wooden chair. 'But I get the impression they're somewhere more dissipated, more inconsistent, harder to wield.'_

'_The other forms are wilder. They don't have their own ministry, or schools, or shops, or any of the other trappings of society,' he replied. 'So you're right in that sense. They're on the margins. And not very visible either. Easily confused with hoaxes and frauds. But some are no less powerful. And they attract would-be followers. And witchfinders.' _

'_And you're helping protect us against them too?'_

'_In their pursuit of false magic, they may from time to time come across the real thing.' He handed the folder back to her. 'And when I look at the contents of that folder,' he added, 'I can't help feeling that some of them might be quite close to knocking on the door.'_

He was sitting behind his large, time-scoured mahogany desk, copying the contents of a pamphlet into an old black ledger using a ballpoint pen. No magically assisted administration here, no signs of magic or any indication that he might have anything to do with the paranormal: just a dusty, cramped and cluttered office. It could almost be the office of an accountant.

For once he wasn't alone: sitting rather uncomfortably in front of his desk was a pale, gentle-looking boy of about eighteen, silently twirling an unruly lock of brown hair and looking very deliberately at a random point on Isaac's desk.

'My cousin, once removed,' said Isaac, looking up briefly from his ledger and pointing to the youth.

'Pleased to meet you,' said Hermione, unphased by the abrupt manner in which the appointment had begun.

She held out her hand and the youth shook it quickly.

'Pleased to meet _you_.'

'Simeon Edwards,' Isaac added, putting down his pen and looking deliberately at his cousin once removed. Hermione nodded to them both and sat down on the spare chair.

'Simeon has something to tell you,' Isaac continued, looking at Hermione. His gaze swivelled back onto his cousin once removed. 'Do you want to tell her or shall I?'

'You can,' Simeon replied.

Isaac looked searchingly at him.

'I may get the details wrong.'

'Oh I'm sure you won't,' Simeon replied.

'Nevertheless,' said Isaac in a more commanding tone. 'This is your story, you should at least have a go at telling it.'

'Ok then,' said Simeon rather glumly. He jerked his head round to look at Hermione, not quite meeting her gaze.

'A friend of mine has gone missing,' he said.

'Oh,' Hermione replied. 'I'm sorry to hear that.'

'By the way,' Isaac put in. 'Simeon's a wizard. Only he attends an ordinary school and has private magic lessons.'

'Ok,' said Hermione.

'Tell Hermione the name of the teacher you said you had last year,' Isaac continued, gently prompting Simeon.

'Oh yes,' said Simeon. 'Miss Herrick.'

'Herrick?!' Hermione exclaimed. 'Do you know her first name?'

'No,' said Simeon. 'Just that she was Miss L. Herrick. That's all I know. She left at the end of the year. Anyway, this friend of mine, Iona, the one who's gone missing, or run away in fact, because she left a note, she really liked Miss Herrick. Found her really inspirational.'

'Inspirational, you say?' Hermione asked, her gaze now burning into his.

'Yes. She did have a sort of air about her.'

'Did she have dark hair and green eyes?' asked Hermione.

'Yes,' he replied. 'Her eyes were green. They really stood out.'

'And what did she teach?'

'Oh … err … psychology.'

'Psychology,' Hermione echoed crisply, flashing Isaac a sardonic look. _How appropriate_.

'Anyway,' Simeon continued. 'Iona was really into magic. That's really why I came to see Isaac. I mean she was really into the idea of magic, even though she err.. can't do it. She was convinced that magic really exists. Although I never told her that it does. I sort of wish I had now. See, the funny thing was that once, a few years ago, we found a wand. A real wand. It had been abandoned under some trees in the park near where we live. Along with a Hogwarts cloak. I let Iona keep it. Anyway, when she ran away, the wand disappeared.'

'How do you know?' Hermione asked.

'I tried a summoning spell, but it didn't work. I even searched her room myself. She must have taken it with her. She said in the note that she was going away to improve herself.'

'Improve herself?'

'Yes.'

'And the night she went missing, I had a strange sort of dream. I dreamed I went back to the place where we found the wand and the cloak. A witch was waiting there for me. She said the wand belonged to her, but she didn't need it anymore because she had discovered some other kind of magic that was much more powerful. She said Iona was with her.'

'What did she look like, this witch?' Hermione exclaimed, leaning forward excitedly.

'Red straggly hair, a rough sort of face.'

Hermione looked again at Isaac, a frown stiffening her lips.

'Does that mean anything to you?' Isaac asked Hermione.

'No, but it doesn't matter,' Hermione replied. 'She could take any form she chooses.'

She turned back to Simeon.

'Can you show me a picture of your friend?'

He nodded and produced a photo from his pocket. The picture showed a pale, pretty girl with long blonde hair. She had an open, gentle smile that gave Hermione a pang of sadness. She didn't look like what she imagined an acolyte of Lillian Herrick would look like. _How naive of me._ The girl who had taken a pint of her blood hadn't struck her as being particularly nice or innocent. But then again, perhaps she had been too before getting involved with the Seven-Pointed Circle.

'When exactly did she disappear?'

'Four days ago.'

'I suppose she might come back.'

'Do you think so?'

She didn't. Not if the girl was under the power of Lillian Herrick.

'Is there anything else you can tell us? About this Miss Herrick in particular?'

He shrugged.

'Not really. She was a good teacher. She gave interesting lessons and everyone used to behave themselves in her classes. Most people though she was quite cool. But just normal really. Apart from those eyes.'

'And you said she left at the end of the school year?'

'Yeah. I think she was only at my school for a year.'

There was nothing much else that Hermione could get out of Isaac's cousin, apart from a promise to contact them if he remembered anything else. Isaac had very little to say either. After a few very long moments, Hermione made her excuses and slipped out of the office. Argenta was still sitting in the waiting room, her gaze absent.

'I'm heading back to the Ministry now,' Hermione informed her.

'I'll join you, if you don't mind,' said Argenta, jumping up from the sofa.

'Sure.'

'More news of her?' Argenta asked as they went down the narrow stairs.

'Yes, more news of Lillian Herrick, the inspirational teacher,' Hermione couldn't help being sarcastic.

'Yeah, I heard some of it through the wall.'

'This one she caught with the lure of magic.'

Hermione pulled open the street door and they went outside.

'It's hard to imagine what it's like, glimpsing it from the outside,' Argenta remarked.

'That's true,' Hermione replied, looking around with wide, suspicious eyes. _She must know we're investigating her. She's probably enjoying it. She may even be manipulating the evidence. _She considered visiting Simeon's school, although she wasn't sure what justification she could come up with for trying to gain an interview with someone there. It would in principle be possible to investigate Simeon's memories to see whether the teacher really was Lillian Herrick; although she felt sure she was.

'Let's not talk about it out here,' she added, her gaze falling on a man walking past in paint-splattered overalls. She had to reign in her stare. _Why am I even looking at him? Why on earth would I think he's got anything to do with any of this?_

'No problem,' Argenta replied. 'By the way, do you have time for a quick coffee when we get back?'

'I don't know. I'm getting behind with other things. It's harder for me to keep on top of work these days.'

They hurried across Clerkenwell Road and started to head downhill, making for the nearest entrance to the Ministry.

'How's Demelza getting on?' Hermione asked. Demelza had managed to get an entry-level job in the Muggle Liaison Office, which made her a colleague of Argenta. One of the only concrete things to come out of Hermione's report on Mr Morley and Lillian Herrick had been an extra post for Muggle Relations, with specific duties in the area of witchfinder affairs. Which meant that Demelza got to help out Argenta whenever she needed it. She had even been invited to Isaac Edwards' office.

'She's getting on well enough,' Argenta replied, never one to overdo praise. 'It's nice to have an ally in the department though. I try to give the impression that she's not my ally of course. I wouldn't want her to be tainted by association. They're actually sorry for her. Sorry that she has to work with me and the witchfinder. That's what they call Isaac of course.'

_Para-magical investigator_ was his official job title. They were coming near to the point where the street they were on passed under the main road. A battered, unobtrusive door was visible in the brick-vaulted underpass. It was the place where Argenta had first waited for Hermione two years earlier to take her to see Isaac. She recalled a tall figure in a black trench coat standing on the pavement just opposite the exit, dead-straight red hair splaying out onto her narrow shoulders, her arms crossed and the fingers of her right hand drumming against her upper arm.

It hadn't been clear to her why Argenta Coyle, a former head girl of Hogwarts, was the Ministry's Witchfinder Liaison Officer, a position regarded in Muggle Relations as a punishment. Perhaps she had annoyed the wrong people. Certainly, the deadpan scowl usually present on her face gave the impression that either she hated her job or that she had the kind of personality that endeared her to no one.

'Maybe I would have time for a quick coffee,' Hermione murmured as they lingered by the door. 'But let's not go to the main refectory.'

'What about the Portrait Room then?'

'The Portrait Room? Umm… ok.'

There were two large cafeterias in the Ministry: the Upper Cafeteria, located just beneath the viewing gallery at the very top of the Ministry, and the Lower Cafeteria, located numerous floors below in what was known as the Portrait Room. It was a cavernous circular room, lined on all sides by vast portraits of former Ministers of Magic. Hermione normally preferred the Upper Cafeteria: even though the daylight coming in from the viewing gallery was false, and she was more likely to have someone staring at her, she found it easier to think in there. By contrast, the Lower Cafeteria was dark and claustrophobic and there was something rather intimidating about having the Ministers' portraits staring at you while you took your tea break.

They sat down at a table adjacent to a bare expanse of wall, where space remained for the portraits of future Ministers of Magic. The most recent portrait to be hung was that of Cornelius Fudge, who looked out grimly from the wall in a smart black suit. It wasn't known whether Rufus Scrimgeour had wanted his portrait done or not. A portrait of Pius Thicknesse had hung next to Fudge for a while, until it had been torn down. There was no portrait of the incumbent Minister of Magic, even though Kingsley had the right to commission one.

Argenta bought espressos while Hermione chose an out of the way table.

'Did you hear what Isaac's cousin said?'

'His cousin once removed?' Argenta replied. 'I caught bits of it.'

'I think it's really significant,' said Hermione. 'It must have been her.'

'I suppose it can give you a clue about what sort of people Lillian Herrick likes to recruit. Apart from you, of course.'

'Not funny,' Hermione replied.

'Well, maybe she hasn't recruited you yet. But you can't deny that she wants to.'

Hermione shot Argenta a grin of bleak defiance.

'Oh yes, she wants to.'

'Still,' Argenta continued, 'given this bargain you've struck with Lillian Herrick, you might have ended up meeting this girl anyway when she came to collect your blood.'

'That's true,' Hermione replied. 'But if I do see her, I'll know something about her. And these little traces of Lillian's real life, they're very encouraging.'

'Did you find out any more about that article?' Argenta asked.

'No, not yet,' Hermione replied quickly. To her shame she realised she hadn't given it much thought. _Though it's not as if I've been wasting my time these last few days_.

For a few moments they sat opposite one another before any other topic of conversation presented itself. Hermione felt that she'd rather lost the knack of making small talk.

'You know what I never asked you?' she began. 'How did you end up working here?'

'Even you think it's strange?'.

'Not at all, you seem to fit in very well,' said Hermione. 'It's just not the sort of job that you would have been expected to go for. You were Head Girl at Hogwarts. I've heard Professor McGonagall say that you're one of the most talented witches she's taught. And here you are working in a job where you're mostly working on things that aren't magic at all. Although I can't imagine anyone else doing your job.'

Argenta seemed pleased by Hermione's comments.

'I love doing magic,' she replied. 'But the less I do it, at least for day-to-day things, the more I appreciate it. _Everyone_ was horrified when I said I was going to work with Isaac. _The most ridiculous job in the entire Ministry_, that's what my mother called it. A job guaranteed to sabotage my career.'

'Working with witchfinders, that's how they see it?' Hermione asked.

'Yes. Even though it isn't, really.'

'So does Isaac sometimes do…'

'I didn't just take the job to annoy everyone,' Argenta continued in a louder tone. 'Contrary to popular belief, it's a lot more interesting than most jobs in Muggle Relations.'

'I wouldn't let Mortimer Knott hear you say that.'

Argenta rolled her eyes in reply.

'Most of Muggle Relations is all about being condescending towards Muggles. All the more so after Voldemort.'

That was sort of true. The view within the Ministry that Muggles needed its protection had only grown stronger over the years. But so had the idea put forward by the Citadel movement that Muggles were a powerful threat to wizarding society.

'So working on witchfinders is an antidote to all that,' said Hermione.

'You're working on the outside,' Argenta replied. 'Literally. You get the chance to see how non-magical people see magic. It's different for you. It must be interesting to have Muggle parents.'

Hermione smiled wistfully.

'Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like to be born into a wizarding family.'

'My family is about as wizard-ish as you can get,' said Argenta pointedly. 'You can barely find a Muggle in our family tree. I grew up on magic, morning, day and night, ever since I was born. We're even related to the Black family.'

'Really?' said Hermione.

'Yes, my mother is something like a third cousin to Sirius Black. On his father's side, I should mention,' she added. 'We have nothing to do with the Lestranges and the Malfoys.'

Argenta looked away for a moment, as if something had caught her gaze. Her eyes narrowed and something like a scowl broke out on her lips.

'Oh no,' she said, almost under her breath. Hermione turned and looked in the direction of her gaze. Striding across the cafeteria was a young man in a rather shiny suit. Hermione recognised him as Will Gash, a rising star in Muggle Relations.

'He was in my year at Hogwarts,' hissed Argenta. 'Insufferable Gryffindor. No offence, of course.'

Hermione smiled.

'Is that what you think of us in Ravenclaw?'

Argenta smirked.

'Come on, you know you're a bit full of yourselves.'

Will Gash positioned himself in front of their table and thrust a brochure down in front of Argenta.

'What do you have to say about this?' he demanded. Argenta scowled at the brochure. It was a copy of _The Night Watch_, the Citadel's official newspaper. Three quarters of the way down the page a sentence had been magically highlighted in red. '_Proof that witchfinder activity is not only increasing, but is becoming more invasive and aggressive, comes from the fact that the Ministry of Magic's Muggle Relations Service recently expanded its operations in the witchfinder field_.'

'So what?' said Argenta. 'It's true, isn't it?'

'What's that got to do with it? Anyway, I never signed off on it. And anything like this has to go through the Spokesman for Muggle Affairs: i.e. through me.'

'What, do you think Isaac or I issued a press release?'

'Would that you issued such benign things as press releases,' retorted Gash. 'More likely you and Isaac Edwards had a chat down the pub with a chum from the Citadel.'

'Anyone who knows Isaac would know that he's the last person you'd see having a chat with anyone down the pub.'

'So how do you explain the fact that this information was leaked?'

'I don't know. But why do you assume that it must have come from me or Isaac? There might be half a dozen Citadel members in Muggle Relations.'

'I very much doubt that,' Gash snorted. 'Muggle Relations is the last place such people would be working. No, at best you let the information slip inadvertently. That would be mere incompetence. Or it was deliberate, because of some sort of symbiotic relationship between witchfinder liaison and the Citadel.'

'Oh, you must be right,' replied Argenta sweetly. 'Would you like to see my Citadel membership card?'

'This isn't a joke,' said Gash. 'I will be taking it up with Mortimer. I'm not interested in what your political sympathies are. You could be Voldemort's lovechild for all I care. That's your personal business. But a Ministry department cannot be seen to have an ambivalent view on an issue as important as Muggle rights.'

Hermione couldn't keep quiet any longer.

'I suppose you have some proper evidence that they have an ambivalent attitude on Muggle rights,' she remarked tersely. 'Because you can't seriously be making such claims on the basis of third-hand information in Citadel propaganda.'

'I base myself on what comes out of Argenta's mouth,' replied Gash tersely. 'Isaac Edwards might be a monosyllabic misery, but Argenta's got quite a mouth on her.'

From the corner of her eye Hermione could see Argenta's mouth contracting with anger. She could swear she was reaching for her wand too. _I'd better keep talking._

'But you have no evidence that they've been making public statements on this subject,' said Hermione calmly.

Gash's mouth curled up in scorn.

'First of all,' he said in a clipped tone, 'you're not part of Muggle Relations, so you shouldn't be commenting on this issue. If you want to discuss this matter further, I suggest you apply to join witchfinder liaison. From what I've heard, their work would suit you down to the ground. But if you want my general view, as if we were discussing this as a matter of principle, I'll give it to you: you're another of these Belhaine apologists. And it's more serious in your case, because you're someone whose opinion and reputation carry, or carried, some clout around here. I'm sorry to have to say it to a fellow Gryffindor, particularly to someone I very much admired in the past. I can very well imagine what you would have said to someone who was _ambivalent_ about Voldemort.'

'I would have said this,' replied Hermione. 'There was nothing to be ambivalent about.'

And at that she rolled up her sleeve and held out her arm: the word _Mudblood_ was still visible in scar tissue.

'Like I said,' replied Gash, looking away from her outstretched arm. 'I'm sorry that I had to say it. It's painful when one's idol falls.'

'I didn't ask to be anyone's idol,' said Hermione.

They looked at each other in silence.

'One of the Ministry's most important tasks is to protect non-magical people,' said Gash.

'And it's right to do so,' replied Hermione. 'But the Ministry of today has one thing in common with the Death Eaters: it thinks of Muggles as weak, defenceless, ignorant sheep. But we're not.'

A curious smile slid out of Gash's mouth. Hermione glanced at Argenta and noticed that she too was looking at her in surprise.

'You're not a Muggle,' said Gash after a few moments. 'You're a brilliant witch, or at least you used to be. If you want to be a Muggle, you'd better turn in your wand and join them.'

He turned to Argenta.

'You'll be hearing from Mortimer about this, once I've made my report.'

Argenta said nothing. Her expression had calmed to one of serene contempt.

At that Gash nodded curtly, turned on his heels and walked away.

At first they said nothing. Hermione looked into her coffee cup, angry that Gash's disappointment at his fallen idol actually bothered her.

'Sorry if I just made it worse,' she said, looking up.

'Ah forget it,' said Argenta. 'It's nothing new anyway. It's good to have someone on our side.'

'Even someone like me?' said Hermione.

'Oh come on, Hermione, you don't need me to tell you what we think of you.'

'Thanks,' said Hermione. 'Sorry, that was a bit pathetic of me.'

'It would be strange to be a Muggle,' said Argenta, her gaze drifting off in another direction. 'I don't think I could do it. I'm too deeply bound up in magic.'

'You know, I almost reckon I could,' replied Hermione emphatically.

Argenta looked back at her. Her expression was more serious.

'Well, if what we think is going to happen does happen, then you and I, and everyone else will have the chance to see what it's really like.'


	31. The vigilance of Hermione Granger - Ch 9

9\. The memory thief

The owl swooped down over the row of poplars that enclosed the garden from the fields beyond it and headed straight for her window. Hermione followed its progress, curious as to who might want to send a message so soon after dawn. The owl landed gracefully on the window ledge and waited patiently as she opened the window. It hopped over onto the windowsill and stuck out a clawed foot for her to unfasten the message attached there.

The message was from Henoc Lutumba, and addressed to her and Ron. Henoc was friends with Harry and with Caius in particular, not so much with Ron or with her. She had heard Ron speak warmly of this 'fellow Auror', as he had called him, and of his well-known prowess at quidditch. It also helped that Ron had never heard any rumours suggesting that he had had some sort of thing for her.

They were being invited on an impromptu excursion planned for Henoc's last day before he was due to return to Paris. It didn't really come as a surprise that the excursion was to a village supposedly steeped in witchcraft, as Henoc was known for his interest in Muggle accounts of witchcraft. On the walk back to the Burrow, Harry had told her what Henoc's _theatre optique_ had looked like. She had heard Henoc himself talking about how he had a list of places around the world that were particularly rich in stories of witchcraft and magic, and he had made it his business to visit them and 'investigate' them. His interest was not in known wizarding centres like Ottery St Catchpole or Godric's Hollow, but rather in places that Muggles saw as being linked with witchcraft. What he was always trying to find out was whether real magic had been done in those places, or whether they had simply become shrouded in muggle superstition.

The invitation stated that Harry and Ginny would be going. That was normal: she had heard that Henoc had been staying with them for a couple of days. Surprisingly Caius wasn't going to be there; that would probably be an incentive for Ron to want to go. She was sort of curious to go too.

Ron was still asleep, so she went and woke him gently. Once he was sufficiently conscious to understand what it was that she was saying, and had grasped that she was actually willing to go, he sat up in bed and brightly announced that they should accept the invitation straight away, sending her back to answer the owl.

It was just before eleven in the morning when they apparated to the pre-arranged meeting point, by a wizened oak tree on a lane just outside the Herefordshire village of Ladymarsh. Henoc, Harry and Ginny were already waiting under the branches of the oak, sheltering from the surprisingly bright and warm sun. They greeted each other rather stiffly. Henoc was the most enthusiastic: presumably he was in his element. His voice was the most prominent in the conversation, as they walked into the village, explaining something of its history and the witches and ghosts associated with it. The supposed haunting of the village churchyard and old manor house were of less concern to him: his main interest was in the repeated outbreaks of witchcraft in the village over the centuries, and the belief among the local people that a powerful and secretive sorcerer had his lair somewhere near the village. What made it all the more interesting for Henoc was that it appeared that no actual wizard or witch had ever lived in the village, which for as long as records could tell, had only ever been a place inhabited by Muggles.

'It seems that every few centuries they burn some poor Muggle as a witch,' concluded Henoc with a tone almost of amusement. The others listened quietly, subtle glances passing back and forth between them.

The village was ancient in appearance, its main street lined on both sides by leaning, half-timbered buildings standing at crooked angles to the road, interspersed with sturdier Georgian and Victorian houses of stone and brick, and the occasional modern house. The village had a pub at each end, a Norman church, a duck pond and a village shop that sold all manner of witch and ghost-related souvenirs. In the warm sunlight, the village seemed picturesque and innocuous.

They had almost reached the end of the village when Henoc led them onto a narrow, sheltered lane that split off from the main street. Here the houses were more scattered and set back from the roadside, some behind imposing hedges. The road itself was in a state of semi-decay, with grass sprouting from the tarmac and trees hanging over the narrow roadway.

'This is the first place I wanted to visit,' said Henoc, stopping them before a house that had clearly lain abandoned for some time. Oddly, the house was probably one of the most recent in the entire village, a 1930s bungalow that sat in a little hollow, surrounded by an overgrown garden of tall, straggly grass and weeds. Its windows were dark and curtainless, and countless tiles were missing from the roof. Hermione shivered, despite the warmth that enveloped them.

'What is this place?' said Ginny.

'Until a couple of years ago, it was lived in by a man the villagers thought was a wizard,' said Henoc, pushing hard on the rusted metal gate to open it. The gate yielded and Henoc stepped inside, beckoning for the others to follow. One by one they passed through the open gate and began to wade through the tall grass that choked the front garden.

'Let's go around the back,' said Hermione. 'I suppose we're trespassing.'

'If you like,' replied Henoc, who was already peering in through the dirty window, wand in hand.

'Should you be waving that about out here?' said Hermione when she saw the wand.

'Relax,' said Henoc. 'No one's around. Anyway, we will need to go inside if we're to find out anything interesting. I can't gather anything much outside.'

'They probably get people looking around this place all the time,' added Ron. 'Muggles love this sort of stuff.'

'And some of them probably even have fake replica wands,' commented Harry.

They went round to the back of the house, pushing their way through the grass.

The backdoor was boarded up, but a charm soon unlocked it. The kitchen was empty apart from some ancient, dust-covered yellow tiles on the walls, so they passed on into the living room. Scarcely any light penetrated the room, whose windows had also been boarded up, so Ron took out his wand to provide them with light. The living room had been emptied of furniture at some point, apart from a single bed that sat strangely in the middle of the room. As Ron held up his wand, they could make out graffiti daubed on the walls. Some of the marks were simply tags, or names and dates, but elsewhere, unknown intruders had left messages like '_burn the witch house_' and '_witches out_'. In one corner of the room, the wall was scorched and covered with soot, as if someone had lit a fire there. Henoc walked briskly over and peered down into the dirt. Soon he had his wand out and was muttering an incantation under his breath.

'Come over here,' he said, beckoning to the others to join him.

In the area above where the fire had been started, a series of runes had been daubed on the wall.

'Hermione? What does it say?' asked Ron.

Hermione went up to the wall and examined the runes. After a few moments she turned to the others.

'I don't know what it means, but it says 'Many are warned, few …'

'Few pay heed,' said Henoc, finishing her sentence.

'Yes, that's it,' said Hermione quietly.

'That's the story of this place,' said Henoc. 'The line _Many are warned, few pay heed_ is a kind of motto of the wizards thought to have lived in this area. The first one to be burned as a witch in this village was heard to shout it to the crowd as they burned. After that the stories of a strange figure walking the woods and marshes started. They called this figure, or wizard, as some thought of him, the _Many are warned_. That's the name associated with the legend. And the man who lived here, he was known to shout it at people in the street, or at children who came too close to his property. No one knows whether he was just doing it to scare people, or whether there was a genuine link between him and the legend. Thing is, there are traces of magic in this house, and I don't mean Ron's wand light. There are faint traces here, by the runes, and over there, by the bed.'

They turned and looked through the half-light at the strange old bed that stood in the middle of the room.

'The magic that was done here, it's not exactly dark magic, or not what we would understand as dark magic. It's something else, but it still feels somehow malevolent,' Henoc continued in a low voice.

'Here are some more runes,' said Hermione, pointing to another dense palimpsest scrawled in a jagged hand, lower down the wall. 'There are two runes written on top of one another. One is the rune for _hate_ and the other is the rune for _hunt_.'

'Sounds charming,' Ron remarked.

'There's another one,' Hermione continued, pointing at the blur of symbols. She paused for a moment, staring at the writing in silence.

'It says: _We know you_,' she said in a changed voice. The others looked at each other.

'What does that mean?' said Ginny.

'I don't know,' said Hermione. 'But there's something really unpleasant about it.'

She looked at their faces: only Henoc's seemed to echo the feeling of dread the runes inspired in her. _Something nasty happened here. Or someone nasty was here._

'I suppose you have some sort of idea about what happened here,' said Harry, turning to Henoc.

'Not really,' said Henoc. 'It seems that the man who lived here just disappeared without trace one day. But whether he was taken by others or left of his own accord, I don't know. Magic has been done here. Our magic. But that may not be the only kind that was done.'

Hermione felt the eyes of the others on her.

'I'm hungry,' she said suddenly. 'What about that picnic you promised us?'

They were glad to get out of the house and back into the sunshine. The garden behind the house was equally overgrown, but it sloped gently downhill to a flat expanse of marshland. Beyond it, the ground rose again up a low, forested ridge.

'Quite a picturesque spot, I have to admit,' said Ginny, as they made their way down the hill.

'Picturesque maybe, what about that stink?' said Ron, pulling a face. 'Who'd live next to a bog?'

'Someone fairly strange by the look of it,' said Harry, with a glance back up towards the abandoned house.

'So where to next?' asked Hermione with an air of forced vivacity.

Henoc pointed in the direction of the ridge that lay beyond the marsh.

'See that hill over to the left? It's called Warning Hill. The domain of the Many are Warned is supposed to be centred on the hill. It'll be interesting to see if it has the same sort of feeling as the house.'

'How do we get there without going through that?' said Ron, pointing at the bog that stretched out in front of them.

'There's a path that will take us around the marsh and up onto those hills,' replied Henoc.

'And how far is that?' asked Hermione.

'About six miles,' replied Henoc insouciantly. 'It won't take us long to walk.'

'Well, we'd better get started then,' replied Hermione. Despite trying to use as neutral a tone as possible, she drew quizzical glances from Ron, Ginny and Harry in turn.

They began to go around the bog, following a faint track that ran along by the edge of where the marshier ground started. The path was for the most part only wide enough for them to walk in single file, but from time to time it widened, allowing them to walk in pairs. Hermione walked with Ron. He took the opportunity to give her a full account of what had happened in Ostend. From time to time he would call out to Harry, who was walking up ahead with Ginny, for confirmation of a particular detail. Each time Harry would glance around, confirm the information in a jovial manner then look back. At some point Harry's version differed from Ron's, which resulted in Ron striding up to him to clarify the information. Henoc, who had been walking alone at the rear, took the opportunity to catch up with Hermione. Henoc made a few passing references to their time in France, but she wasn't particularly keen to relive them. After a while Henoc drifted into conversation with Ginny, leaving Hermione to walk alone at the back of the group. The ground gradually began to rise again, and the bushes gave way to woods. The afternoon was already well advanced, and their stomachs were empty.

'Wouldn't this be a good spot to stop?' said Ginny, as they came out of the trees onto a low, grassy hill. Everyone was quick to agree with her and began to drop down onto the grass. Henoc slightly grudgingly put down his bag, opened it and produced the picnic lunch that he, Ginny and Harry had prepared that morning. As the others ate quietly, Henoc seemed restless and eager to press on towards their destination, which still lay a few miles away, owing to their detour around the bog. By the time they had finished eating, it was past three. Discussion of how far they were from the final stop on their tour prompted Ron to suggest apparating there. Henoc looked at him with surprise.

'I thought we agreed to walk there and then apparate back,' he said.

'Before you decide whether we're walking all the way there or not,' added Harry, 'don't forget some of us may be getting tired.'

'I'm feeling fine,' retorted Ginny.

'Oh no, I didn't mean you,' he replied hastily. Ginny shot him a strange sort of look then immediately glanced at Hermione.

'I mostly meant me,' he continued, patting his stomach. 'And Ron of course,' he added with a grin, jocularly patting Ron's stomach for good measure.

'Speak for yourself,' protested Ron. 'I'm not past it yet. I didn't suggest apparating there for myself.'

Harry glanced at Hermione. She began to open her mouth, but stopped herself. The idea of apparating to the destination was soon dropped. Harry quickly declared that the rest had revived him.

The sky had begun to fade from blue to grey, and a cooler breeze had whipped up through the trees. As they approached their destination, tiredness seemed to dog their footsteps more and more, and the walk continued in near silence. Even Henoc's head had gone down, his enthusiasm seemingly starting to wane. As they passed under an eroded, overhanging rock, Hermione stopped. Harry turned and came to a halt, followed quickly by Ginny.

'What's wrong?' he said quickly. Hermione glanced over her shoulder at him for a moment then turned back to the rock.

'There's something I don't quite like about this place,' she said, still looking at the rock face.

'The feeling's been creeping up on me for the last half a mile or so.'

Harry glanced around at the rock and the thin forest canopy above them. The place did have a faintly oppressive air about it. He glanced at Ginny. She had a slightly quizzical expression.

'There is something about this place,' said Henoc as he arrived in front of the rock, enthusiasm returning to his voice.

'I think we should have our wands out, just in case,' said Hermione.

'What if we meet some ramblers?' remarked Ron. 'How are we going to explain the fact we're prowling around the wood like a bunch of lunatics with magic wands in our hands?'

'Ever the one to worry about what the Muggles think,' commented Ginny drily.

'Who'd be wandering around here anyway?' said Hermione, a slight tone of revulsion in her voice. 'Apart from other people who are interested in the legend.'

'Look, if the worst comes to the worst, we can alter their memories,' said Henoc impatiently. Harry looked away into the trees, while Ron, Ginny and Hermione simultaneously shot Henoc a series of looks. Henoc looked at them and shrugged rather sheepishly.

'Let's just keep going,' he said.

After some hesitation they all took out their wands and continued through the woods, albeit a little more cautiously. The terrain rose again, and the shadows slowly began to lengthen.

'It won't be far now,' said Henoc. He had barely spoken when a woman's scream shattered the quiet of the afternoon. Everyone froze.

Harry was the first to speak.

'Is this a joke?' he said sharply, turning to Henoc. His pulse was racing, but a thought had occurred to him that this had all been arranged in advance. _A little fun for Henoc's send-off_.

'Oh you think I was behind that?' Henoc replied. His bulging eyes and shaking hand seemed to suggest that if a hoax was being staged, he wasn't in on it. Harry turned and looked at the others: their faces were equally tense. Hermione took a step towards him.

'Even if it is a joke, we have to take it seriously in case someone really is in trouble,' she said quickly. 'The worst that can happen is that someone will be having a laugh at our expense.'

Harry nodded swiftly in reply.

'It was coming from up ahead,' added Ron. 'It sounded pretty convincing to me.'

'Let's go then,' replied Harry.

They set off along the path as fast as they could move, all tiredness forgotten. They had barely gone a hundred yards before they emerged from under the cover of the trees onto a sparse, grass-covered hillside. A lone, withered and wind-bowed tree stood at its summit. As they started up the hillside, Ginny suddenly stopped in her tracks, catching up Harry by the arm.

'Can you see that?' she said in a low voice. He looked up.

'Yes, I can see it,' he replied grimly, hesitantly holding his wand out.

At the summit of the hill, in place of the wizened tree, a fire was burning from a pile of massed logs, and a human figure all in shadow seemed to writhe within the flames.

'What on earth is that?' said Ron.

'An illusion,' said Hermione firmly. _Done using the Circle_. 'Pay no attention to it. Look down there, something's moving,' she added, pointing to an area where the slope dropped away again, back into the trees. They looked. A shadowy figure was passing under the trees. They cut across the flank of the hill, bypassing the burning stake at its summit. The figure seemed to linger in the undergrowth, as if it was waiting for them to catch up with it.

'Be on your guard!' shouted Ginny, who was the furthest forward. When they were no more than a few metres away, the figure disappeared into the darker recesses of the wood. Harry fired off a stunning spell, but it rebounded off a tree trunk. They bounded down the slope and into the trees. Here there was no path at all, and they were forced to weave around the trees and push their way through the undergrowth as best they could, stumbling along the way. The shadowy figure moving up ahead was intermittently visible, but it seemed to be clothed in green, making it harder to spot. The lack of any path meant that the five of them had become separated from one another, but they could each hear the others breathing heavily and hacking their way through the wood, in some cases casting enchantments to cut away branches and thickets.

'I think we're gaining on him!' shouted Harry, firing another stunning spell through the trees. _Who says it's a he?_

As Hermione followed the direction taken by Harry's spell, it appeared to her that the figure seemed to cast a rippling effect as it passed through the trees. _Can the others see it?_ _Or am only I supposed to see it?_ She altered her direction slightly, so that she followed the strange distortion of the trees, which she felt sure was part of the game someone was playing with them. The ground began to drop away again and grew damper and muddier. Suddenly the trees ended and she found herself on the gravelly bank of a stream. She was not alone. A shadowy figure stood on the opposite bank, just a few metres away from her. It was tall, close to two metres high. Even at so small a distance, its outline was indistinct against the trees, seemingly shimmering in the gradually fading light. She could make out no face, only two piercing dark blue eyes emerging from a hooded cloak of green brocaded silk, veiled in shadow. Although it had no mouth, she could sense its amusement.

'You want us to catch you,' she said to the figure. It was only once she had spoken that she realised that she had not opened her mouth.

'I wanted to see _you_,' replied the figure. 'But you won't catch me.'

'Why did you want to see me?' said Hermione, wondering when the others would catch up. She wanted to shout to them, but found that something was binding her voice.

'I want to take something from you,' said the voice, which spoke with a rasping, oddly androgynous voice inside her head. 'And give you something in return.'

'Who are you?' said Hermione.

'Many are warned, few pay heed,' replied the figure, a trace of laughter in its voice.

'You're not very convincing,' said Hermione. 'I can see through you.'

'Ah, _you_ would,' said the voice mockingly.

'We know each other then,' she continued. 'But you're not Lillian.'

The figure made no response. But she could sense that this was not Lillian Herrick.

'Thank you, Hermione,' said the voice finally.

'What for?' said Hermione.

'I have taken something,' said the voice. 'A memory of yours. I wanted it as a keepsake. And as promised, here's something in return.'

Suddenly she felt the touch of a wand in her free hand. She glanced down for a moment, and instantly she recognised Harry's wand, or at least a very convincing imitation of it. She looked up again, but the figure was gone. She felt sure the figure had invoked the Circle to place the wand in her hand, mocking her by giving her the very evidence that could prove its presence there, if she dared to show the others.

Someone came crashing through the undergrowth behind her. She turned and saw Harry race into the clearing by the water's edge.

'I heard you speaking to someone,' he began in a rushed voice.

'It was there, just on the other side of water,' said Hermione, pointing to the other bank. 'The Many are Warned, or someone impersonating it.'

He looked at the place she was pointing to. Then he saw the wand in her hand. He held up his own hand, which held an identical wand. Before Hermione could explain, there were more movements in the undergrowth, and Ron arrived to find Harry and Hermione looking blankly at one another, each holding one wand only.

'Hermione says she saw the Many are Warned on the other bank,' said Harry. Ron glanced around quickly.

'It's gone?' he exclaimed breathlessly.

Hermione nodded.

'What happened?' he said.

'It stood on the other bank looking at me, then it laughed and disappeared,' said Hermione after a moment's thought. She wasn't sure how to explain the rest. Then she realised that she had almost forgotten the figure's boast that it had taken a memory from her. The replica of Harry's wand had distracted her just the right moment. Now she began to search her thoughts, in an attempt to locate the memory that had been taken, wondering whether it meant that the Many are Warned had stolen a memory altogether or simply glimpsed it as it groped inside her mind. _It will have wanted a significant memory_, she reflected. Something that would appeal to Lillian. _Maybe a memory full of guilt. Probably a memory related to Harry._ Hearing footsteps approaching through the bushes, she abandoned the search. _How can I find a memory I possibly don't have anymore?_

Henoc and Ginny were the last to arrive, and Hermione began her story again for their benefit. Henoc was particularly interested, and asked Hermione if she could draw a sketch of the Many are Warned. Hermione continued to maintain that the figure was an impostor, but did her best to draw the apparition she had seen anyway. Once she was finished, Henoc apparated to the opposite bank, muttering incantations in order to search for traces of magic. He returned quickly, a broad grin on his face.

'Magic has been cast very recently at that spot,' he said, pointing to the area where the strange figure had stood.

'So it was an impostor,' said Hermione.

'Or rather, it was a genuine wizard,' remarked Ginny.

'Yes, a genuine wizard was here, therefore not some supernatural spirit lurking in the woods,' replied Hermione.

'Still, it's not a hoax,' said Henoc.

'Agreed, it's not a Muggle hoax, but why can't it be a wizarding hoax?' retorted Hermione, her eyes flashing.

'Who knows we're here in order to play a practical joke on us?' said Ginny.

'Virtually no one,' Henoc confirmed.

Hermione groped around for an answer, until Ron provided one.

'Caius Hanmer,' he said. 'He told Henoc he couldn't make it.'

'So Caius came down here especially to impersonate the Many are Warned and make us chase him through the woods for nothing?' said Hermione.

'Sounds like his style to me,' replied Ron.

'Maybe in the past, but he's grown up a bit since then,' said Hermione. Ron's eyes narrowed in suspicion.

'Well if it is Caius, wouldn't we be expecting him to jump out of the bushes any minute and laugh at us?' asked Harry quietly. Ron wheeled around to stare at him, and he felt Ginny's eyes on him as well.

'I don't think Caius would do it,' replied Henoc. 'The old Caius might have done, but it's true, he is more serious these days. '

'I haven't seen much sign of it,' remarked Ron snidely.

'I doubt you've been looking very closely,' replied Hermione.

'Oh you have I suppose?' he retorted.

'So what's your conclusion?' said Ginny, interrupting them by turning suddenly to Henoc. 'That the Many are Warned is real?'

Henoc shook his head.

'I don't know exactly. It isn't just Muggle paranoia at work here. Wizards have been here, wizards like us, and maybe there are traces of some other kinds of magic.'

'What other kinds of magic?' said Ginny.

Hermione wanted to speak, but bit her lip instead.

'There are other kinds,' replied Henoc. 'More primitive kinds, which draw on other powers. There was something strange back at the house. It felt stranger even than this place,' he continued, holding up Hermione's drawing. 'I won't be crossing Ladymarsh off my list.'

'Maybe there was something genuinely strange in that house,' said Hermione. 'Oppressive even. But in a way I've never felt before. Still, I'm sure that whoever it was that stood on the opposite bank over there and laughed at me knew who I was. It wasn't some mouldy old legend, it was a modern-day practitioner of magic.'

'How can you be sure?' said Henoc.

Hermione paused for a moment then shrugged her shoulders.

'Just a feeling,' she said finally.

'We'll see,' replied Henoc, almost defiantly.

Hermione stared at him in silence. At the same time she could feel everyone looking at her. She wondered how long the silence would last.

'What was the point of this day out anyway?' said Harry finally, turning to Henoc. 'Was it to solve this mystery or just to have a picnic and go for a walk in the woods? Since we have no way of knowing what really happened here I vote for the latter.'

'Sounds about right to me,' said Ron. 'It's starting to get dark as well. Let's get out of here.'

Henoc shrugged.

'As you wish,' he said. 'But I'll be coming back here at some point.'

Hermione turned away from Henoc and glanced around at the others. Harry was still looking at her quizzically.


	32. The vigilance of Hermione Granger - Ch10

10\. Threshold Island

Ron Weasley was prowling the corridors of the Ministry. He was not in the best of moods as he made his way towards Hermione's office; the fact that this was an unannounced visit made him slightly uneasy. Hermione looked visibly shocked when he knocked and came inside: her face was white and her eyes had the look of someone caught in the act. Most of her desk was taken up by two large maps. One was a magical map, showing Hogwarts, Hogsmead, the Dark Forest and the surrounding hills. The other was clearly a muggle map, motionless and covered with a dizzying mass of contour lines. He peered over Hermione's shoulder and she immediately started folding up the muggle map.

'Not Ministry work, I take it,' he said.

'No,' she replied stiffly.

'What are you doing then?' he asked, trying to soften his tone but not quite managing it.

With a flourish of her wand, Hermione caused the magical map to fold itself away.

'Lillian Herrick has set up house not far from Hogwarts. I'm trying to find the exact location.'

She had to be challenged on that.

'Is she planning to throw a housewarming party or something?'

Hermione said nothing.

'Was there a particular reason for you coming to see me?' she asked with exaggerated sweetness.

'I'll be going on a mission,' said Ron. 'Today. It's urgent. The Auror Office is going to interrogate the Citadel people.'

'Really?' said Hermione. The news seemed to interest her. 'I don't know what you'll get out of them.'

'Neither do I.'

'Still, I suppose it has to be done.'

_Not exactly a vote of confidence_.

'Yeah, I reckon it does.'

'Are you going to Azkaban to speak to them?'

'No, they're going to be brought to somewhere neutral out at sea. An island.'

'I suppose you mean Threshold Island?' said Hermione.

Even with her mind clearly on other things she was disturbingly well-informed.

'That's it,' he said. 'It's going to be me, Kingsley and Harry. We'll be there two days. I just wanted to let you know, in case you were wondering where I was this evening.'

His voice trailed off. She seemed to take his meaning.

'Thanks for telling me,' she replied, a rather sad expression on her face. 'Are you leaving now?'

Ron nodded.

'It'll be hard work,' she added.

'We're expecting it to be,' said Ron. 'Still, maybe Belhaine will finally admit that he knew about the plot. Then he'll have a right to stay in Azkaban.'

She started to say something then stopped. He had expected more of a reaction, but maybe she was trying to keep quiet on the subject of Gondulph Belhaine. He had heard about the incident with Will Gash. _Yet another sensitive subject_.

'I think you'll find a bit bleak, Threshold Island,' she said at last.

'Oh, with Harry and Kingsley it'll be alright,' said Ron. 'It'll almost be like old times.'

She looked as if she was concentrating on something very far away. In the past he would have expected a barrage of advice. Her advice used to annoy him. Now the lack of any advice annoyed him just as much.

'I'd best be going,' he added, glancing awkwardly around the office. It was more disorganised than he remembered it.

'Ok,' Hermione said in a soft voice. 'Good luck.'

She stood up abruptly and kissed him on the cheek. He looked at her for a moment then made his way out.

Harry and Kingsley were waiting for Ron when he reached Kingsley's.

'Ready?' said Kingsley, rising to his feet and moving out briskly from behind his desk. 'We're leaving right now.'

'Should I have packed anything?' asked Ron, glancing at Harry, who seemed to have nothing with him but his wand.

'Sun cream, swimming trunks, detective novel,' suggested Harry with a smirk, which Ron answered with one of his own.

'The facilities are basic, but they'll have everything we need,' said Kingsley.

'What about veritaserum?' Ron asked.

'I have some just in case,' Kingsley replied, 'but I feel almost certain it won't work. Lashburn will not have been sent on his mission without first taking the necessary dose of the antidote as a pre-emptive measure.'

'That makes sense,' said Harry. 'It's not as if he's likely to have been a lone assassin.'

'Quite,' said Kingsley. 'Now, gentlemen, if you don't mind … This is our portkey.'

He pointed to a cheap-looking plastic replica of the Eiffel Tower sitting unobtrusively on his desk.

* * *

The first thing visible to them was the sea, stretching away to the horizon on three sides, beneath a grey sky heavy with clouds. The land beneath their feet was little more than a sandbar rising up out of the water, topped with tall grass and dotted with the occasional stunted tree. At the bottom left-hand corner of the island, a narrow wooden jetty extended out into the water.

'I hope no large waves come this way,' remarked Ron with a shiver.

'Come with me,' said Kingsley, ignoring the remark and beckoning for them to follow him. They turned around and began to wind their way through the grass, which led first upwards before dropping down into a hollow from where the grass had been mostly cleared. Sitting in a small wasteland of pebbles, sand, and the odd clump of dirty grass, was a strange building: it was squat and utilitarian, windowless at ground floor level and with small, porthole-like windows upstairs. The building had two storeys, plus a box-like appendage mounted on the roof, giving it the appearance of a very rudimentary lighthouse. At first glance the building seemed octagonal, but closer inspection revealed it to have nine sides in total and no less than three separate entrances. As they came nearer the facility, they could make out the figure of a man sitting in the structure mounted on the roof. He paid them the slightest sign of acknowledgement, before continuing to survey the horizon with a kind of grim concentration, cramped in his little box like a crane operator.

'Who's that?' Harry asked, pointing at the man in the box.

'That's McPheeters,' replied Kingsley. 'He looks after the facility. He's our only permanent staff member here, on rotation with his French and Belgian counterparts. He's here only four months a year.'

'Lucky him,' Harry remarked.

'Put it this way, it's not a job that anyone could do,' replied Kingsley.

They reached one of the facility's three entrances and waited while Kingsley performed an incantation to open the door. The door promptly swung open, revealing a narrow corridor that ended in another door. They went down the corridor and repeated the procedure. The inner chamber was triangular and lit by an artificial, or perhaps enchanted, light that emanated from no visible source. The room was almost empty: its sole furniture was a rectangular table made of a blackish-green metallic substance and three wooden benches pushed against the three walls. The room contained one other item: a kind of inverse funnel hung from the ceiling, its open end gaping over the table.

'Very … geometrical, this place,' remarked Ron.

'I forgot you haven't been here before,' said Kingsley. 'Everything is in threes because this is neutral territory, shared by the British, French and Belgian wizarding authorities. Somebody thought it would be useful to have a quiet, neutral place where we can meet to discuss matters of importance and share information. The island used to be just a sandbar somewhere between the three countries, but it was made more permanent using magic. Shipping avoids it, which makes it very convenient. That's why it's called Threshold Island. Or _L'__Île __du Seuil_. Or _Drempel_.'

'So how far's Azakan?' said Ron.

'Close enough,' replied Harry.

A noise like a foghorn began to sound above their heads.

'What's that?' said Ron, ducking his head instinctively.

'It means we're right on time,' replied Kingsley. 'The prisoner is about to arrive.'

They followed Kingsley back out of the building and down across the dunes. In the space of just a few minutes, the temperature had dropped and a thick grey fog had begun to swirl around the island.

'It's not …?' Ron began.

'No,' replied Kingsley quickly. 'No Dementors. But when the boat comes back from Azkaban it brings back a reminder of them.'

A pale light shot out over their heads and disappeared into the fog. They looked up and saw that the wizard McPheeters had come out of his cabin and was standing very still on the roof of the building, his wand outstretched and his eye fixed on a distant point. As they followed the line inscribed by the wand light, a thin, narrow ship made of a kind of silvery metal and with a single light burning at its helm glided silently out of the fog and slid up alongside the jetty. They looked up at the ship but saw no movement on deck. Then the wand light faded to nothing and the vessel came to a halt alongside the jetty. McPheeters lowered his wand and went back inside his cabin.

On deck a single figure staggered forward as if in a daze. Kingsley and Harry immediately raised their wands and caught the figure in an enchantment. For a moment he was held stock still, then he began to advance in a jerky, puppet-like manner down a walkway that led to the dock.

'Silas Lashburn,' Ron murmured, watching as the would-be assassin of the Minister of Magic shuffled to a halt in front of them on the dock, silent and glassy-eyed. 'He seems a bit done in,' he remarked.

'Oh, he'll warm up once we get him inside,' replied Kingsley. 'He's still under the effects of the Charon Charm.'

'The Charon Charm?'

'The charm that transports the prisoner here from Azkaban,' said Kingsley. 'It envelops the boat and seals it, freezing anyone on board into a kind of trance, and preventing anyone from gaining access from outside.'

'It's the Azkaban Ferry,' added Harry drily. 'But only prisoners get to ride it.'

'Not exactly a pleasure cruise,' said Ron.

'No, but it's better than Azkaban,' replied Kingsley.

They made their way slowly back up through the grass, the silent figure of Silas Lashburn apparently sleepwalking ahead of them.

'By the way,' said Ron, 'once we're back inside, and he's woken up, what's to stop him trying to assassinate you again?'

'Nothing much,' replied Kingsley. 'Apart from the fact that it'll be just him against three Aurors in a magically sealed room. We should all keep on our guard anyway.'

They re-entered the facility through the same entrance and sat down at the table, Kingsley, Harry and Ron on one side and the still listless Lashburn on the other. He was a thin, wiry man with a shock of black hair, of about Harry and Ron's age, but who looked older. Nevertheless, his time in Azkaban had as yet had no visible effect on him. It was known from his file that although he came from a wizarding family, he had not been educated at Hogwarts. Instead he had attended a muggle private school and received magical training at home, from a privately employed tutor of magic. The practice was rare, but not unheard of. The Ministry even kept a record of such itinerant teachers of magic. The practice had a long history, longer even than the history of Hogwarts, and did not seem to turn out more dark wizards than the schools of witchcraft and wizardry. The actions of Silas Lashburn had triggered a Ministry investigation into the activities of these roving teachers. Some were now calling for them to be banned altogether.

It took a few minutes for Lashburn to come around. When he did, he found three wands trained on him. He made a dismissive gesture with his hand and leaned back in his seat, an expression of contempt on his lips.

'I wouldn't bother, I'm not going to try to escape.'

'Azkaban has grown on you, has it?' remarked Ron. Lashburn made no reply.

'With all your colleagues there with you, the atmosphere must be almost jolly,' added Kingsley. 'Or has the feeling of failure soured things?'

This drew a more marked scowl from the prisoner.

'Yes I failed,' he said, with a snarl in his voice. 'But your victory is as hollow as it could possibly be. I hope you enjoy your last days in office, because before long you're going to be the ones being interrogated.'

'And what is it you suggest I do?' asked Kingsley thoughtfully. 'To avoid someone else trying to remove me from office.'

Lashburn looked at him bleakly.

'There's nothing you can do but go back to the Ministry and tell everyone to prepare for war.'

'War against the muggles?' said Harry. 'Should we perhaps start on them first? I reckon Voldemort would have had a use for you.'

Lashburn laughed.

'Whatever you think about Voldemort, at least the division between wizards and muggles would have stayed in place.'

'Stayed in place?' Harry exclaimed. 'The muggles would have fought back once they knew what they were up against.'

'You're right, Harry Potter, in a way,' said Lashburn, leaning closer to his interrogators. 'Given the chance, the muggles will fight us. And we'll see who subjugates whom.'

'We're not here for philosophical discussions,' said Kingsley brusquely. 'We already know what you think relations between wizards and muggles should be. We're here to talk about your orders, and who gave them to you.'

'Oh, it was my idea,' said Lashburn blithely.

'Really,' commented Ron.

'Really,' he replied. 'I had no orders. I went beyond my remit, if you like.'

'Oh well, in that case, we had better let Belhaine and all the others go,' said Ron.

'It's certainly true that attempting to assassinate me didn't help your cause,' remarked Kingsley. 'I would have expected more subtlety from Belhaine.'

'That's true,' said Harry. 'It almost seems like a miscalculation; so maybe it wasn't a miscalculation after all. You seem to like playing at being political prisoners. Maybe you were meant to fail.'

'And what would be the point of that?' replied Lashburn quietly.

'By your logic the Ministry will be overrun by Witchfinders,' replied Harry serenely. 'As political prisoners of the current regime you'd look much more credible to whatever would be left of wizarding society. So you'd be ideally placed to lead the resistance.' _I'm having a kind of Hermione moment_.

Lashburn's smirk wilted on his lips.

'Sounds almost plausible,' said Lashburn. 'Except for one thing. Who's going to release us from Azkaban? When the Witchfinders arrive they'll most likely throw us in the sea.'

Harry and Lashburn looked at each other in silence. After a few moments, Harry realised that Kingsley and Ron were both staring at him, not at the prisoner.

'Proceedings adjourned,' said Kingsley. The funnel-shaped device above their heads made a faint whirring noise in response.

'I want a breath of fresh air,' said Kingsley, who was already heading for the door. 'Harry, can I have a word?' Harry followed him back down the corridor and out of the facility, while Ron kept his wand trained on Lashburn.

'That's an interesting theory, Harry. How come you never mentioned it before?' said Kingsley when they got outside. A keen breeze was blowing through the grass. The fog had lifted from the island but still seemed to cling to the Azkaban ferry.

'It only just occurred to me,' replied Harry.

Kingsley looked at him thoughtfully.

'And where did you get the idea from?'

Harry returned his gaze, considering what response to give.

'It was a shot in the dark,' he replied, conscious of Kingsley's curious expression.

'We all know that Citadel claims that the Witchfinders are a threat to the wizarding world,' said Kingsley. 'But do they really believe it?'

'Who knows?' replied Harry quickly. 'But judging by the look on his face, Lashburn does.'

'That may be what he's been told,' said Kingsley. He turned back towards the facility. 'Let's go back inside. We can talk about this later.'

The two Aurors went back into the facility. When they re-entered the interrogation room, Lashburn was still sitting at the table. Harry noticed that Ron shot him a strange look as he sat back down at the table. Kingsley muttered an incantation and the funnel-like device whirred again. Once it had fallen silent, Kingsley resumed the questioning.

'So, do you expect someone else to carry on your work, now you're in Azkaban?' he asked.

Lashburn smiled in response.

'If you're expecting me to give you names, you're wasting your time. I don't want to help you and there's nothing you can offer me that would tempt me to talk.'

'Don't you want to save the wizarding world from the muggles?' said Harry. 'Isn't that your mission?'

Lashburn paused for a moment.

'I will save the wizarding world by helping you to capture the rest of our organisation, is that right?' he asked sarcastically.

Harry glanced across at Kingsley, who shook his head in reply.

'The only way that the wizarding world can be saved,' Lashburn continued, 'is if you let us all go and we work together.'

'I've told you before,' replied Kingsley. 'If you have some genuine intelligence that can save us all from this supposed disaster waiting to happen, you should hand it over.'

'You'd better ask our leader,' he replied. 'And you ought to ask him nicely. If it were up to me, I'd tell you to get stuffed, because I really don't care what happens to you. But then again, I'm no one. Expendable.'

With that he folded his arms and sat back in his chair.

'We will be asking him, don't worry,' said Kingsley.

'Well then, good luck,' replied Lashburn. 'By the way, I have nothing else to say. I'm ready to go back.'

'You don't mind going back to Azkaban?' said Ron. 'Sure about that?'

'I don't care,' was the only reply forthcoming.

Daylight was beginning to fade. The Azkaban ferry had drifted away from the jetty and was moving silently into the distance, still enveloped in fog.

'We'll continue the questioning tomorrow,' said Kingsley.

'Do you want to bring him back for more questioning?' asked Ron.

'No, we'll try someone else, someone more reasonable. Someone who's more interested in self-preservation,' replied Kingsley.

'Is there anyone else you want to try apart from Belhaine himself?' Harry asked. 'We could try a family member like Xavier Belhaine or Tobias Destrument, or one of the others.'

'We'll go for Belhaine himself,' replied Kingsley. 'There's no guarantee that the others are any better informed than Lashburn.'

That evening the Aurors ate a frugal dinner prepared by McPheeters. The warden's living quarters consisted in a low-ceilinged kitchen and adjoining sleeping area, located above the interrogation chamber. The upstairs of the facility also contained a further two guest rooms and a bathroom. McPheeters was a tall, well-built, balding man with a thick auburn beard. He said little over dinner and didn't seem eager for news of life in the outside world. But he wasn't an oppressive presence; he seemed quite content with his life on the island. Once McPheeters had retired to his bedroom, the Aurors' conversation drifted inevitably back to the questioning of the prisoners.

'Deliberately getting yourself locked up in Azkaban for public relations purposes is what I'd call a high-risk strategy,' Kingsley remarked over the last mouthfuls of dinner. 'Particularly if you've no way of knowing how long you're going to be staying.'

'Unless you have information that the Ministry is going to fall quickly,' Harry remarked.

'Is it possible they've been promised a place in the new regime?' said Ron, thinking out loud.

'What, you mean they're actually in league with the witchfinders?' said Harry. He wanted to say that Hermione knew some of them, and she would have worked out if they were double agents. But that was just the sort of thing he shouldn't say.

Kingsley shook his head and took a mouthful of tea.

'No, that's going too far. I think Belhaine really believes that wizarding society is under threat from the outside world. But I think you're right, Harry. Rather than be the head of some puppet regime he must want to profit from the chaos that would result from the fall of the Ministry to establish a new order.'

'Do you think we'll get much out of him tomorrow?' asked Ron.

'Depends on whether he thinks he can get something worth having out of us,' replied Kingsley. 'In any case, he'll be shiftier than Lashburn.'

'Does Lashburn know much more than he's letting on?' said Ron.

'Possibly,' said Kingsley. 'But what I really want to know, whether from Lashburn or Belhaine himself, is whether there's some specific intelligence that Witchfinders are a genuine threat to the wizarding world.'

_Ask Hermione_. That was something else Harry wasn't supposed to say.

'Well, like you said, we all know that that's one of the Citadel's claims,' Harry commented, sitting back in his place and folding his arms.

'They claim a lot of odd things,' remarked Ron, before adding, 'I think it would be worth having a look at this Destrument. He seemed like the most dangerous one in Ostend.'

Harry remembered a particularly nasty curse that had seemed to come out of nowhere that night, barely missing him. It could only really have come from Tobias Destrument. _But he was the one who rescued Hermione and Caius and Serena Lynch from the witchfinders_.

'Maybe, but the key is getting Belhaine to confess,' said Kingsley. There was a determination about his tone that seemed to lay the subject to rest.

They didn't linger much longer over the remains of their dinner. Kingsley departed to one of the guest rooms, while Harry and Ron took the other. The room was as utilitarian as the rest of the facility, with bare, metallic walls and a small, circular window. The wind was squalling outside the darkened window.

'I thought this place was created using magic,' muttered Ron as he climbed into his bunk. 'They could at least have made it a bit more cheerful.'

'Maybe since it's so close to Azkaban, it can't get any more cheerful than this,' replied Harry from his bunk on the other side of the room. Ron nodded, then looked suspiciously up at the small circular window.

'Are we sure that no Muggle ships are going to crash into us in the night?' he asked.

'Um … I don't know,' was all that Harry could manage as a reply. He too looked up at the window from his pillow. After a few moments he took off his glasses and settled back down.

Ron listened for a while to the wind buffeting the window before drifting into sleep. After a long passage of blackness, he seemed to revive. He was walking the streets of London at dusk. One street of Georgian terraces gave way to another, some smarter, others faded, until he found himself staring up at the entrance to Grimmauld Place. He wondered _when_ he was. Harry had moved out of the house years earlier, handing it over to a wizard charity to use as its headquarters. No Death Eaters loitered in the square and the cars parked on the street were of the present time. As the light faded, a light went on in an upstairs window, but Ron couldn't make out anyone standing there. The moment seemed to be enveloped in a kind of peaceful weariness.

He heard footsteps on the street and looked in their direction: _Hermione_. She was coming towards him, or towards the house. She didn't seem to see Ron, and he felt that he should make no attempt to draw attention to himself. She was wearing a black trench coat that he realised he hadn't seen her wearing for a few years at least. She looked younger, less underweight and less haunted, but her expression and movements seemed to echo the sense of tiredness he felt about the place. She paused on the doorstep of Grimmauld Place, spoke a silent incantation and the door swung open. While the door remained open, Ron took the opportunity to slip inside. It was not Kreacher standing behind the door, but Harry himself. He too looked younger. Hermione and Harry embraced without words, then stood for a moment, looking at each other in the long, narrow hallway.

'Why are you being so mysterious?' Hermione asked.

'Come upstairs and I'll show you,' said Harry, taking her by the hand and leading her up the stairs. Ron followed silently. He wanted to interrupt them, or signal his presence to them, but he realised that he had no voice and no physical form there. Harry and Hermione made their way quickly to the top floor of the house, to a large room there that Ron remembered Harry using as a kind of repository for the belongings of Sirius Black and his parents, such as he had been able to gather. As far as Ron knew, the room had remained magically locked and outside the terms of the lease with the wizarding charity. But here the room showed every sign of current use: tall workbenches occupied the middle of the room, piled with books and papers and covered with discarded pieces of magical tools and machinery, some glowing haphazardly, apparently leaking magic.

Harry led Hermione a little way into the room and stopped.

'Close your eyes,' he said in a soft but firm voice. Hermione obeyed and straight away the room went dark. Ron reached out a hand that wasn't there, instinctively probing the darkness in an attempt to regain his bearings. _Why did it go dark? Because Hermione closed her eyes_.

'Open them.' It was Harry's voice again. The room reappeared and Harry was standing in front of Hermione. He pushed what looked like a small suede pouch into her hand. She looked down and slowly began to tug on the pouch's drawstring, seemingly delaying the moment when the package would fall open. At last she pulled a small, silvery object out of the pouch and laid it on the palm of her hand. It was a small bracelet, made of a series of interwoven strands of a material that looked like a kind of molten metal, molten because the strands pulsed and swirled around each other, emitting a pale glow. The silver strands of the bracelet circled each other incessantly, as if they were participants in a perpetual race.

'What's this for?' Hermione asked, her voice so soft it was barely audible. Harry put his hand on hers.

'Do you know what day it is?' he said gently.

'Of course,' she said, looking quickly up at him. 'It's exactly one year since you defeated Voldemort.'

'Since _we_ defeated Voldemort.'

They looked at each other in solemn silence.

'I can never begin to say thank you,' said Harry, still half immersed in his reverie. 'So I won't even try. I just had to give you something. To show you that I haven't forgotten anything, to show you how much you mean …'

'Stop it, Harry,' said Hermione, grasping his hand and squeezing it tightly.

'Will you wear it?' said Harry, his voice hesitant. 'It's my first and only attempt at actually making a magical object.'

'You _made_ this?' she exclaimed. He nodded, trying to smother the grin breaking out on his face.

'It took quite a while to get it right. But it has some special properties. If you put it on, you'll be the only person who'll ever be able to see it. And as long as I'm alive the metal will never set… I know I'm taking liberties…'

Hermione touched his arm.

'You're not taking any liberties,' she said plainly. Then she unclasped the bracelet and closed it around her wrist. The glowing strands of metal continued to circle her wrist, locked in their seemingly endless race.

'Already I can't see it,' said Harry. 'I hope it looks good on your wrist.'

'It does,' replied Hermione in a voice of hushed concentration as she continued to contemplate the bracelet. When she reached out and touched it, it was slightly warm. Then she took a firm step forward and kissed Harry on the cheek, her right hand lightly resting against his arm, her left hand gripping him just above the elbow.

'We won't say anything,' she said, speaking into his ear. 'We'll just know it's there.'

Revulsion, mixed with anger at his helplessness, swelled inside Ron. The image before him fell away. Once again he saw before him the ill-lit room and heard Harry's faint breathing from the bunk across the floor. He was awake, the anger and revulsion still with him. He threw off the sheet and stumbled out of bed. _I was dreaming_. He crossed the room to Harry's bunk and stood over him, a look of contempt on his face. _Only dreams are never that convincing_. It was all too believable. The complicity between the two of them made him sick. _It's betrayal. Pure and simple_.

'What would it take to make you confess?' he said to Harry in a low voice, leaning over him and scrutinising his friend's sleeping form. Then he went back to where his clothes were strewn by his bed and took out his wand. Again he stood over Harry, now with his wand trained on him. But as he ran through curse after curse in his mind, he felt his anger abating. _If I wasn't dreaming, what just happened_? Any half-decent wizard could invade the mind of someone who was asleep and plant images there. Was it some malicious attempt to sow discord between him and Harry? It wouldn't be the first time someone had tried something like that. The image of Harry giving Hermione the bracelet and her reaction to the gift replayed itself in front of his eyes. But this time he felt more composed, more analytical. The complicity between the two of them used to be on display on a regular basis. But with time it had seemed to fade.

'Maybe she's taken it off,' he remarked snidely to the sleeping Harry, who made no reply.

_Or maybe it's a warning_?

The sound of heavy footsteps in the corridor outside made Ron startle. He turned to the door, half expecting to see Kingsley walk in. He could already see how weird he looked, standing over a sleeping Harry and talking to himself. The footsteps passed on down the corridor and faded to silence. Ron lowered his wand and went and sat back down on his bed. When he glanced up at the window he could see that the first hints of dawn seemed to be coming on.

Breakfast was as low-key an affair as dinner had been. Nonetheless, McPheeters had prepared a fry-up, which Harry and Kingsley both seemed to wolf down. For once it was Ron who was having trouble getting through his food, a fact that did not escape the others unnoticed.

'I'm just not hungry,' he explained. When he saw McPheeters frowning at him from through his beard, he quickly added 'But it is really good. I just didn't sleep very well.' He redoubled his efforts to finish his plate under McPheeters' piercing stare.

With a chill in the air and fog swirling in, the Azkaban Ferry docked for the second time in successive days. This time, the sole figure on deck was the slight, almost wizened form of Gondulph Belhaine. Once again, Kingsley, Harry and Ron stood by the wooden jetty and guided the prisoner off the ship and into their custody, following exactly the same procedure as the day before. Slumped in the chair on the other side of the table, he seemed fragile, almost decrepit, but as the effects of the Charon Curse wore off, the colour returned to his cheeks and his pale blue eyes began to sparkle. He greeted his interrogators with a languid smile and a slight bow of the head.

'A fine deputation. Our Minister for Magic and his heir apparent.'

'There is no heir apparent,' Kingsley replied curtly.

'You presumably know best, Minister,' Belhaine replied.

He looked at them with an air of vague curiosity.

'How can I help you gentlemen?'

Kingsley put his hands on the table and leaned towards the seated Belhaine.

'We want to ask you how to save the wizarding world.'

There was no trace of irony in Kingsley's voice. For a moment Belhaine seemed surprised. Then he began to smile again.

'You'll forgive me if I'm not quite able to take you seriously,' he said quietly.

'I'm serious,' said Kingsley. 'I want to know what this intelligence is about an imminent threat to the wizarding world.'

Belhaine looked more serious.

'There are plenty of portents, if you care to look.'

'The Ministry can't act on portents, we need facts. However much we study your pamphlets and speeches, we never find anything substantial. It makes it hard to take your threats seriously.'

'And all it took for you to take us seriously were the rash actions of a stupid boy,' Belhaine remarked, half-question, half-statement.

'That's still your version of events, is it?' said Harry. 'That Lashburn acted alone?'

'Perhaps I should have told him to do it after all,' replied Belhaine, the urbane smile back on his lips. 'It seems to have had at least one positive effect.'

Kingsley pulled himself up stiffly, took a few quick steps towards the door then turned back.

'We're giving you one chance to help us,' he said grimly, scrutinising Belhaine. 'After this it's back to Azkaban.'

'Release us all and we'll talk,' Belhaine countered.

'It doesn't work like that.'

'In that case, we'll stay where we are and take our chances the day the security at Azkaban lapses', replied Belhaine, leaning back in his chair and seemingly contemplating a distant point.

'You seem pretty confident about your chances of escape,' said Harry, cutting in.

'I have more confidence in _that_ than in the Ministry's chances of doing anything useful to stop the threat facing us all,' replied Belhaine.

'Well I suppose you don't actually have that much to gain from us releasing you now,' Harry exclaimed, a straining, nervous energy bubbling up inside him. 'And if we did you'd all look like collaborators to your adoring public.' His statement came rushing out in a single breath. For a moment, Belhaine shot him a rather curious look.

'I find it quite interesting listening to you talk,' he remarked serenely. 'Please go on.'

Harry's gaze was unflinching.

'I'll do more than that,' Harry replied. 'I'll even give you a reason to help us. When you escape from Azkaban and announce yourselves as the leaders of the resistance movement, you'll be able to have the satisfaction of telling what's left of the wizarding world that you even told us where to look and we still couldn't do anything about it.'

Belhaine fixed Harry with his gaze. He wasn't the only one staring at him.

'When the Ministry falls,' said Belhaine quietly, not taking his eyes off Harry, 'I hope you survive at least. You've certainly proved pretty indestructible so far. If you do, I will welcome you to the resistance.'

Harry swallowed and said nothing.

'It's true that I have nothing that you would regard as concrete proof,' Belhaine continued, leaning closer to Harry. 'But I have heard a warning, from a source I regard as wholly reliable. So you see, you could keep me in Azkaban for twenty years and I could never tell you anything more, because I don't know more than what I've been told.'

'And what have you been told?' Harry asked.

'Simply this: be ready, because the day is coming. No more than that.'

'And who is this source?'

'I can guarantee that you will never find him: he only ever appears when he wishes.'

'In that case, there's no harm in you telling me his name,' said Harry, scrutinising the face of the prisoner. Belhaine seemed to flinch for a moment.

'Oh, I would come to harm, I'm sure,' said Belhaine in a thin, stretched voice. 'Although he is apparently nowhere, he has ways of seeing and hearing.'

'You could be the saviour of the wizarding world,' said Harry quietly. Belhaine looked at him then shook his head.

'No I couldn't,' he said. 'In any case, my source isn't part of the plot against you. His warning was based on whisperings he himself heard. And he listens in very dark, remote places.'

'What dark, remote places?' Harry asked.

Belhaine's gaze seemed to flicker for a moment then his sickly smile resumed its place on his lips.

'Places that are beyond my reach or comprehension,' he replied. 'Places I have only heard hints of.'

'But in these places,' said Kingsley, 'there are people plotting against the Ministry?'

'You see things in terms of your own narrow interests, Minister,' said Belhaine. 'I should think that the matter of Ministry security is quite insignificant from their perspective.'

'Whose perspective?' Harry insisted. 'Are these people behind the Witchfinders?'

'My impression,' Belhaine replied. 'And it is only an impression, because I know very little and have probably already said too much, is not that they are actively against you, but rather that they are _allowing_ the pieces on the board to move against each other. What their interest is I don't know, only that they love war; they have always loved it.'

'Again, who are _they_?' said Harry.

A look of fear darted across Belhaine's face.

'I don't know them. And I don't want to know them.'

'This is hopeless,' said Ron from behind Harry's back.

Harry glanced round at him for a moment.

'He's right,' said Belhaine. 'Don't waste your time trying to find my source, just heed his words: be ready, because the day is coming.'


	33. The vigilance of Hermione Granger - Ch11

11\. Within the circle

A paper aeroplane glided noiselessly onto Hermione's desk and came to a halt a few inches from her hand. She finished composing her sentence then glanced over at the memo that had just arrived. She had low expectations of it containing anything of interest. The memo fluttered slightly, sensing her glance. When she reached out and touched it, it leapt into the air and unfurled itself in front of her eyes. To her surprise, the text was nothing more than a series of random numbers and letters, as if the message was encrypted, or simply the product of a malfunctioning charm. She was about to dismiss the message when the page set itself alight, the paper burning itself away to reveal a second message hidden beneath it. The handwriting was Harry's.

_I know you said let's not speak, but I had to tell you this one thing: Belhaine's claims about an imminent threat to the wizarding world come from a single, mysterious source, which he sees as very reliable. He said that this source had knowledge of something he called 'dark, remote powers' that he knew very little about and which genuinely seemed to scare him. If I understood him rightly, these dark powers are not the threat itself, but rather are 'allowing' it to happen. That rang a bell for me, and probably will for you too._

_By the way, if you're holding this in your hand, mind your fingers as it's about to self-destruct._

_H_

True to its word, within moments the message promptly turned to cinders before shrivelling and disappearing. Hermione stood up swiftly and began to pace her office. Harry's memo posed far more questions than it answered. But if Lillian Herrick was pulling the Citadel's strings as well, it would surely be campaigning on too many fronts, and increased the chances that the Ministry would start taking her plan more seriously. At the same time, it created divisions in the wizarding world, divisions that would amuse her. But if it wasn't Lillian, who other than her and her group knew about a threat to wizarding society? _Could there be an informer within the coven?_

She stopped her pacing and went back to her desk. Neatly folded at one end of it, partly concealed under Ministry papers, were the two maps she had recently acquired. She took out the ordnance survey map and unfolded it on the desk. Pencil markings now crowded one section of the map, indicating the relative positions of Hogsmead, the Witches' March and Pendle House. She scrutinised the markings once again, trying her best to memorise them. Then she walked quickly out of her office, making for the nearest entrance to the flue network.

Her first point of call was an alleyway behind Turnmill Street. As it was invariably deserted, it made a good halfway house whenever she left the Ministry. She paused there no longer than a few seconds before disapparating.

The farmhouse looked as dilapidated as the last time she had seen it, surrounded on three sides by overgrown trees whose branches almost reached the upstairs windows, and whose roots surely extended beneath the foundations. The house was not quite derelict, but there was no outward sign of habitation. She took out her wand and walked slowly towards the front door, looking around her to make sure that she had come to the right place. But she had no doubt that this was Pendle House, or 'Pendall's Farm', as she had seen it marked on one map. She paused before the front door, wondering whether she should do something so mundane as knock on it. _Why have I even come here? I have to do something._

Deciding that she might as well use her wand to open the door, she lifted it to the keyhole and whispered _Alohomora_. The door swung open instantly onto a narrow hallway with dust-covered flagstones on the floor and bare walls last painted decades earlier. A single light was shining in the hall. The hall had two closed doors, one to the left and one to the right, then continued in increasing darkness until it opened out into a stairwell and a battered staircase leading to the upper floor.

She tried the door to her right: it was unlocked and yielded easily. Fading afternoon light lit the room but left much of it in shadow. The room was some kind of parlour, furnished with an old, faded three-piece suite. It was smaller than she had expected and showed little sign of use. A large painting hung on the back wall, free of dust and seemingly much more recent than the rest of the room's furniture. She approached the painting, using wand light to illuminate it. The painting, which was disproportionately large, had a dark, varnished wood frame that gleamed beneath her wand light. The style was that of an Old Master, and seemed to depict a scene from antiquity, something like the sacking of a temple by what looked like Roman soldiers wielding swords and burning torches. Drapes had been set alight, statues smashed, and most of all, bodies lay piled in every direction, while the soldiers relentlessly massacred whoever was in their path and looted sacral objects of gold and silver. The cruelty in the eyes of the soldiers and the terror in the eyes of their victims were depicted in the clearest of detail. She found it hard to look at the painting for long, and her eyes fell to the bottom of the frame. There the apparent title of the picture had been attached on a small brass plaque: _The purging of the witches_.

She lowered her wand and turned away from the picture. _This was put here to taunt me_. She had not expected her visit to pass unnoticed, and now she had no doubt that she was being watched, and that certain surprises had been put in place for her benefit. She exited the room and went back into the hall, following it as it led away from the front door. At the far end of the hallway lay the kitchen. It had cracked, scuffed flagstones on the floor and a large, rectangular wooden table in the middle of it. She noted that there was plenty of room for seven people to sit around the table. A kettle was plugged into a power point on the work surface, suggesting that the kitchen had been used recently. She went over to the kettle and opened it. A quantity of murky water sloshed around in the bottom of it. On the same wall as the work surface, she noticed another door. It was smaller and more unobtrusive, and rotten at the bottom. When she touched the door, she felt a slight shudder run through her. _This place has been waiting for me_. The stairwell was narrow and dark, but she could make out walls of bare stone arching down over the steps as they rounded a corner and continued down into darkness. She followed the steps down, holding her wand out in front of her, until they opened out into the level below.

The room stretched out in front of her under a vaulted stone ceiling, illuminated only by her wand light. To her disappointment, no one awaited her in the lower chamber.

She cast her light around the room, illuminating a large table, this time circular, with seven high-backed chairs arranged around it. Carved onto the table was an image that was only too familiar to her: the Seven-Pointed Circle.

'What am I supposed to do now?' she caught herself saying, but her voice simply reverberated off the basement walls and the silence offered no reply. She went noiselessly over to the table and instinctively touched it: the scoured wooden surface was almost warm to the touch. She looked up at the chair nearest to her, and noted that the number 6 was etched into the wood just above the headrest. She glanced around at the other chairs, each marked in the same way with a number following a descending sequence. She followed the numbers down to the last chair, only to find that between 2 and 7 there was no 1. She straightened herself and made her way slowly to the unmarked chair, logically the chair of Lillian Herrick herself. The place above the headrest where the other chairs were marked was empty. She moved closer to the chair, pointing her wand directly at it. Where a moment before there had been nothing, a question mark appeared. It lingered for a few moments before vanishing, only to be replaced by the letter H, which rapidly changed to _He_ and then _Her_. Then the _Her_ disappeared, replaced instead by _Ha_. The _Ha_ faded away slowly, but this time it was replaced with another _Ha_, then a third. When the third _Ha_ faded, it was replaced only by blank wood.

She continued to stare at the same spot, but the chair conveyed no more messages. She knew what she was being invited to do. She reached out and touched the back of the chair then slid down on it. Nothing. She stood up again and took a couple of steps away from the table, just to be certain that she could, then sat down again. Still nothing. There was only one thing left to try. Under her breath she began to recite the incantations, struggling at first to recall them exactly. The dimly lit basement room soon faded to complete darkness, and remained so until the incantations were complete. Now the room presented itself to her again, seemingly just as it had been before.

'Give me two this time,' she said to the silent room. 'I'll pay for them in full.'

Footsteps could be heard echoing down the stairs. Then out of the shadows a young man stepped forward and sat down at the table, at the seat just across from her. He was tall and good-looking, with close cropped blonde hair and a trim goatee beard. His expression was utterly inscrutable, but his pale eyes examined her with cold curiosity from behind dark-rimmed spectacles.

'She always said we would see you sitting here,' he said at last, in a voice that seemed to express disappointment. 'Do you like it?'

'Not particularly,' replied Hermione. 'So you're number two, are you?'

'This is just a table,' he replied nonchalantly. 'I sit wherever I want.'

'How nice for you,' she replied in as cool a tone as she could manage.

'So you said you want to see two,' he continued after a short pause. 'You think you can handle the blood loss.' There was no trace of a question in the remark, only cold observation.

'That's my problem, not yours.'

'Fine by me.'

'Can I at least know your name?' she asked.

'No,' he replied, 'I suppose you'll find out what it is when you finally give in and join us.' There was a note of derision in his voice.

'I'll find out anyway,' she countered.

'Oh will you?' he replied, unimpressed.

They looked at each other for a few moments in the dimly lit basement. She tried to discern some emotion beyond the sardonic contempt he had shown her so far.

'Give me your arm,' he said brusquely, shattering the silence. She hesitated for a moment, then relented and stretched it out.

A muscular, tattooed arm reached out and seized her by the forearm with unexpected violence. Then the other arm shot out and roughly pulled up her sleeve. She expected the hands to be cold, but they were hot, almost feverishly so. As he attached the tourniquet he shot her a look that almost seemed to express hunger. She looked away when he took out the needle, and he laughed silently before driving it into her skin and drawing out the blood. She closed her eyes and waited for it to be over.

The next thing she knew was that someone was shaking her to wake her up. Her eyes flashed open. The man was still sitting just across from her, two blood bags in his hand.

'This is what your blood looks like,' he remarked, holding up one of the bags and sullenly examining it. 'It's interesting to see it outside the confines of your body, don't you think?'

She said nothing.

'I'm surprised I managed to get a whole two pints out of you,' he continued. 'You're a scrawny little thing. The Circle might consume you. You wouldn't be the first.'

She ignored the remark. Knowing that she would feel the after-effects later on, she got quickly to her feet.

'Shall we?' she said coolly.

He stood up abruptly and looked contemptuously at her.

'Follow me,' he said, before turning around and heading back up the basement stairs. When he pushed open the door, it opened not onto the kitchen, but out into the open air. Rows of gravestones lay on either side of them, filling a vast cemetery that sprawled over the side of a hill, beneath a leaden grey sky. Down the slope, in the valley below, Hermione could see row upon row of terraced houses climbing a distant hillside, while above them clouds of steam soared from a single concrete chimney.

'Where are we?' she asked.

'Oh, some shit hole of a town,' was the reply. Without another word he led the way down the hill, past the assembled masses of graves to the point where a low stone wall meandering down the slope blocked their path. They turned left and followed the wall until they came to a rusted iron gate. The man gave the gate a powerful wrench and it scraped open. Beyond the wall there were yet more graves, but arranged more sparsely and clearly less tended. Here the grass grew much longer and wilder, and their progress through it was slower. Soon another, even lower wall came into view, and beyond it Hermione could make out a muddy pasture grazed by a handful of forlorn horses.

'There,' said the man, pointing to a weather-worn solitary grave that protruded out of the grass, not far from the back wall. Hermione said nothing and approached the grave, crouching before it to read the inscription. It said only:

_Louisa Kilham. Born 1886. Died 1913_.

'Who was she?' she asked, looking up.

'She was one of yours,' the man replied with a bored air.

'I suppose you mean she was a witch,' said Hermione.

'That's why she's buried in the part of the cemetery reserved for undesirables,' he replied. 'She died in a mental asylum, put there by her own family. They took a dim view of people with supernatural abilities.'

Hermione looked back at the grave. Assuming that the account of Louisa Kilham given to her was true, she could well imagine what a terrible fate the woman had suffered. She felt like she ought to say something to her, but could only bow her head slightly.

'Paying your respects? How touching.'

She looked up and scowled at him, but said nothing.

'They say that after she was buried, a strange light used to hang over the grave,' he continued. 'Might have been superstition or hysteria. Then again could have been some remnant of her power.'

'And this is the gateway?'

'Yes.'

'What, through the grave?'

'Don't ask me how it works — you paid to see the place, nothing more.' There was impatience in his voice.

She turned back to the grave, looking for some sign or trace of magic. After nearly a century it was hard to imagine that there would be anything left. She felt helpless standing before the grave of a woman who had seemingly never even come into contact with the wizarding world, yet had left some sort of interconnection between the two worlds when she died.

'Sure you can take two at once?' came the mocking voice at her back.

Hermione turned from the grave for the last time.

'I'm sure,' she said, and they were gone.

When her vision cleared, Hermione found herself looking at a place all too familiar to her. They were in Ottery St Catchpole, in front of the expanse of wasteland where she had seen the graffiti write itself. It was evening and darkness had fallen, if darkness could ever be said to fall within the Circle.

'Here?' said Hermione.

The tone of alarm in her voice seemed to please the man.

'A concentration of wizards live round here, don't they?' he said. His face still wore the same sullen expression, but there was a hint of amusement in his voice.

'So the messages on the wall were yours?'

'Messages?' he said. 'Oh yes, I remember seeing them. We didn't put them there. Why would we write on a wall?'

'Oh, so it's a coincidence then?' Hermione remarked drily.

'I can't say I care one way or the other,' replied the man. 'Wizards live nearby. People who don't like wizards know this and left them some friendly messages.'

'And you didn't lead them here?'

The man glanced towards the substation with a bored air.

'We have better things to do. They do their own research I suppose. And they're drawn to you. Your secret places aren't so secret anymore.'

Hermione shuddered, a fact that the man noted with satisfaction.

'And the gateway is here?' she asked.

He stretched out his arm, the beginning of a jagged scar just visible at the edge of his sleeve.

'It goes through that yew tree growing over the substation.'

The wizened tree hung mockingly over the dilapidated brickwork of the substation building. Suddenly she heard a multitude of footsteps on the lane at her back. She whirled around: a mob was marching down the lane, heading for the wizarding suburb of the village. Some bore burning torches, and others held wands in their hands. And leading the mob she recognised Robert Marchelow, a look of frenzied rapture on his face, his eyes fixed on his target, the wizarding houses that lay beyond. The marchers surged past Hermione without even glancing at her. She watched as a line of torches passed down and up the contours that cut across the lane, advancing silently and incessantly. Finally a great fire was lit in the distance, in the quarter of the village where the Burrow and other wizarding houses stood. The flames rose higher, buffeted by a swirling wind that blew up from nowhere.

'You've had your merchandise,' said the voice at her side. As she looked in the direction of the voice, the outline of the man was already blurred and fading away. 'Enjoy the come down.'

When she opened her eyes she was back at Lillian Herrick's table, the dreary basement room before her. She half expected the mocking faces of the coven to be around her, but the other seats at the table were as empty as ever.

The dizziness hit her as soon as she stood up. She staggered forward a couple of steps, pins and needles shooting up through her feet. _If I don't get out of here quick, I'm going to pass out_. Standing on the bottom step, she decided to try disapparating. To her surprise it worked, and she found herself back in the alleyway behind Turnmill Street. The feeling of lightheadedness intensified, together with cramps in her legs and a throbbing pain in her arm where the needle had gone in.

Once back in her office in the Ministry, all she could do was lay her head down on her desk and wait to see if she felt any better. Suddenly, a knock on the door made her jolt upright. The door opened and Harold Hawkwell walked briskly in:

'Hermione, I wonder if you could …' his sentence trailed off and he stopped dead in the middle of her office.

'Yes Harold, sorry, I was just...' she replied, her words leaking out through a fog.

'Are you feeling well?'

'Umm … not great,' she replied, reaching about her desk in an attempt to locate a compact.

'You're as white as a sheet. I don't think I've ever seen someone looking so pale.'

'Yes, I'm sorry, I really don't feel well,' said Hermione. Honesty seemed the best policy in the case in point.

Harold Hawkwell promptly sent her straight home, for which she was grateful, and so within a few minutes she was back in her home. For a moment she hesitated on the landing, wondering whether she should record what she had seen, but gave up almost straight away and went to bed, not noticing the drops of blood she left in her wake.

* * *

Ron apparated in his living room. The house was silent, the afternoon overcast and dank. He was tired and hungry, and the house felt cold. The interviews with Lashburn and Belhaine had been less productive than he had hoped. At least Harry was going to write the report.

'Hermione!' he called out, but there was no reply. This did not strike him as unusual, so he rummaged through the kitchen cupboard and took out a cake tin containing the remains of a Madeira cake baked by his mother and cut himself a slice. Then he flicked the switch on the kettle and sat down in the kitchen, finishing the cake before the kettle had boiled. He decided nevertheless to ask Hermione if she wanted a cup of tea, and called out her name again. When there was no reply, he trudged up the stairs.

The upstairs of the house lay silent in semi-darkness. Ron squinted in the direction of Hermione's office for the thin line of light that could usually be seen under the door, but it was dark there too. Deciding that perhaps she wasn't home after all, he flicked on the light switch without thinking. He was about to head back down the stairs when he noticed splashes of blood on the landing carpet, continuing in an uneven trail to the door of their bedroom. He made his way noiselessly to the bedroom and went in. Through the half-light he could make out Hermione lying fully clothed on the bed, asleep or unconscious. The splashes of blood continued across the bedroom floor, and there was a bloody smear on the bed, next to her outstretched arm. He reached out and touched her arm, which was cold and clammy. Suddenly his heart started beating faster and he fumbled to check her pulse. He located it at the fourth attempt.

He switched on the bedside lamp, which caused her pupils to flutter beneath closed eyelids. Her face was almost yellow in the lamplight. He shook her gently by the arm and she opened her eyes. She looked up at him vacantly then raised her head slightly. After a few moments, her eyes showed recognition.

'Have you been at the Burrow?' she said. Her voice was clear, but her pupils were dilated and her gaze seemed directed in a different direction.

'No,' he replied, a little confused by the question. 'Why would I have been?'

'Go,' she said, 'Go there now.'

'Why?' he replied, confusion giving way to concern.

'To make sure it's still there,' she replied in the same strangely composed tone.

'What are you talking about?' he exclaimed. She half-glared at him and sat upright, now seemingly fully awake.

'They're coming to burn it,' she replied 'They're going to burn every wizard's house.'

'Who are?'

'The witch-hunters.'

Ron dropped down onto his side.

'What are you talking about?' he repeated, the fear starting to give way to irritation. 'Are you delirious or something? You don't look well at all.'

His tone of voice seemed to make her focus. Slowly she pulled herself semi-upright, her head propped up by the bedstead.

'That's three ways into our world I've seen now,' she said, looking straight at him with a clear expression. 'Three gates that can be thrown open to the outside world. And one of them is in Ottery St Catchpole.'

He looked down at the bloody smear on the bed and then across at her arm. There were now two messy incisions from where her blood had been taken.

'Stop doing this,' he said suddenly, grabbing her by the arm. 'Nothing's worth this madness.'

'Do you think I'm doing this for fun?' she replied, wrenching her arm free. 'Tell me what you're going to do about the gateway in Ottery St Catchpole!'

Ron sighed.

'You'd better show it to me,' he said.

'All right, I will,' said Hermione, already pulling herself up off the bed. But as soon as she was on her feet her legs gave way and she toppled onto the bed.

'I'll show you a bit later,' she said in a restrained voice.

Hermione was unable to get out of bed all day. To her dismay, Ron called his mother over to examine her. Mrs Weasley performed a series of charms over her, all the time looking disapprovingly at her as she lay in bed.

'She should be on her feet by tomorrow,' she said to Ron as she left the bedroom, casting a last worried look at Hermione. Mrs Weasley evidently went to see Ginny on her way home to vent her unhappiness at the situation and to encourage her to try and help Hermione 'for your brother's sake if for nothing else'. As a result, that afternoon Ginny arrived in Chase End with Harry in tow. Ginny sat by Hermione's bedside, preferring to ply her with the latest gossip on the Ministry and their shared acquaintance rather than confront her over her night-time activities. Harry lingered a short distance behind her, before moving around the bed and sitting in silence on a chair in the corner of the room. Hermione was grateful for Ginny's approach and tried to participate as much as possible in conversation, as she couldn't bear to have yet another person begging her to stop. Finally Ginny seemed to exhaust all safe topics of conversation. After a few moments of silence, she took Hermione's hand and squeezed it, while looking into her eyes with a friendly but stern expression.

'You know what I think,' Ginny began. 'So I'm not going to repeat what everyone else has said. There's no one here who's cleverer than you, so please think very carefully as to whether this is the best course of action.'

She had neither the strength nor the will to argue with her. She groped around for a reply.

'Believe me,' she replied at last. 'If I could avoid all this, I would.'

Ginny said nothing, but the hint of a frown appeared on her lips.

'You know, I hope I'm wrong too,' Hermione added. 'The best thing to happen would be for all this to be in my head.'

'Hermione, that would be worse,' Ginny replied gently, the concern visible in her voice. Then she turned to Harry.

'What do you think about this?' she said in a low voice.

Harry stood up and walked to Hermione's bedside.

He looked down intently at her, not smiling or frowning.

'Hermione,' he said, 'are you sure you're not letting Lillian Herrick win?'

She raised her head, all the time returning his gaze.

'Maybe that's the point of the game,' she replied. 'Maybe I'm supposed to lose.'

Then she let her head sink back down into her pillow.

'Hermione, you're bleeding,' said Ginny suddenly, pointing to a stain that had appeared on the eiderdown. Quickly she pulled back the cover, revealing a narrow trail of blood running horizontally along Hermione's abdomen, a little below her rib cage. Ginny quickly spoke a series of charms and the blood withdrew, leaving Hermione's pyjamas and the eiderdown free of any trace of blood. Ginny said nothing for a few moments. Then she stood up.

'I think you should rest now,' she said gently, turning and heading towards the door.

Hermione nodded.

'Take care Hermione,' said Harry in an odd voice, making his way awkwardly around the room and following Ginny out onto the landing.

* * *

'Here?' said Ron, squinting at the overgrown electricity substation. He had walked past the expanse of waste ground a thousand times in his childhood and it always looked the same. He had no idea whether the substation had ever even worked, and as a child of a wizarding family, he had had little contact with electricity until he moved into a house originally furbished for Muggles.

'Over there,' said Hermione, pointing at the yew tree that formed a jagged wreath over the top of the substation. She did not look much healthier, but her strength had returned, and with it a kind of nervous defiance that put him on edge too.

Ron stepped into the uneven grass and pushed his way towards the tree.

'And you say you had a vision where a load of people came marching down the lane with torches, on their way to burn down the Burrow?'

'I suppose you could call it a vision,' said Hermione, who was carving her own path through the foliage. 'Though I don't know whether it's what will happen or what might happen. In fact I don't think I would call it a vision after all.'

'I'm glad we cleared that up,' said Ron, using his wand to push aside overhanging branches.

'I doubt we're going to see anything on this side,' said Hermione, looking nervously over his shoulder.

'Then why are we here?' said Ron. He peered into the gap between the substation and the yew tree. There was an open space between the yew tree and the concrete wall that ran behind the substation. A handful of cigarette butts and an upended bottle of spirits lay on the ground.

'Do you reckon the witchfinders had a party here?' he said, looking up at Hermione and shooting her a withering look.

'It's obviously just local teenagers,' she replied crossly.

'Do you think they knew they were hanging out on the border between the magical and non-magical worlds?'

Standing there in the bushes, with nothing but the remains of the substation and a rotting concrete wall in front of them, the idea of a border between the two worlds struck even her as faintly absurd.

'Did you come here just to make fun of me?' she said after a short pause. Her tone was more subdued.

'No,' Ron replied, 'but is it possible that someone else is making fun of you?'. He stood up to his full height, put his hands on his hips and looked at her with a sad expression.

She looked again at the yew tree and the substation and sighed. The wall where threats to wizards had once appeared before her was bare, apart from the occasional scribbled graffiti tag.

'I have to admit that there wasn't much chance of seeing anything here today,' she said, almost to herself.

'Well, I don't think the Auror Office can spare anyone to stand guard here just in case any witchfinders climb out of the tree or climb over the back wall,' said Ron.

'No, I'm sure it can't,' said Hermione coolly.

'Who would put a gate here anyway?' Ron remarked.

'No one deliberately put a gate here. It's more like a hole.'

'Well, if there's a hole, can't it just be sealed up?'

'Can you find it, first of all?' Hermione asked quietly.

'No, but I thought you said it was here?'

'I'm sure it is here. But that isn't quite the point. Let's say we could actually see it. Do you know any charm that could seal up a hole in the separation between the non-magical and magical worlds?'

'No, I don't. But you're the expert on obscure charms.'

She shook her head, more to herself than to him.

'I've looked. I've _really_ looked. It just hasn't really come up before.'

'What, you mean there have never been any holes before?'

'Maybe not.'

Ron looked blankly at the tree.

'Well, if this is a hole then I suppose there could be holes anywhere.'

'_Exactly_,' Hermione exclaimed. 'Exactly, Ron. There aren't seven gates,' she continued, now speaking as if to herself. 'There could be any number of them. And more and more could appear.'

'What are you talking about?' said Ron. He was getting tired of using the expression.

'Maybe the Separation is breaking up of its own accord,' she replied, her expression transported.

'Now you've lost me.'

'You know what the Separation is, don't you?'

'Umm, what separates the magical world from the non-magical world?'

'Yes, that's right.'

'And that's a real thing, is it? A real piece of magic?'

'Not exactly. It's more theoretical.'

Ron screwed up his face.

'Theoretical?'

'There are plenty of people who believe it's a real thing. But it's not a piece of magic. It's more an amalgamation of different forces, the most important of which is … well, basically the combined effect of all magic cast. Only no one's ever proven its existence.'

Ron's expression had worked its way into a scowl.

'So this gate that's not a gate,' he remarked, waving his hand in the direction of the yew tree, 'might not exist at all?'

She looked rather despairingly at him.

'Ron, let's not get into a philosophical discussion about this.'

'No, let's not,' he agreed.

'It's a bit complicated to explain. I should discuss it with Isaac Edwards.'

He scowled again.

'If you think that'll help …'

'It might do.'

'He believes in such things, I suppose?'

'We've spoken about the Separation before,' she replied quickly, her enthusiasm getting the better of her. A quick glance at Ron showed that he didn't really share it.

'Are you staying here?' she asked.

'Well, you said you want to discuss this with Isaac Edwards.'

'Yes.'

'And I take it you want to do that now?'

'I ought to.'

She waited for a few moments, as if she was trying to puzzle out what Ron would actually do. He was showing no signs of moving.

'What are you going to do then?' she asked after what seemed like a lengthy silence, interrupted only by a burst of rather maudlin birdsong coming from the yew tree.

'Since we're in Ottery, I think I'll call in on Mum and Dad,' Ron eventually replied. 'Perhaps you'd like to say hello to them.'

'I do want to say hello to them,' she replied in an altered tone. 'I want to say thank you to your mother for her healing charms. I'm feeling much better now.'

He studied her. Not much colour had returned to her cheeks, but her eyes had regained their usual intensity.

'Are you coming then?'

She glanced down the lane in the general direction of the Burrow then back at the yew tree. Finally she nodded stiffly to him.


	34. The vigilance of Hermione Granger - Ch12

12\. The wrong Hermione and the wrong Harry

'Quite plausible. And if true, makes our job impossible.'

Isaac Edwards stood leaning against his desk in the midday penumbra of his Office on Hatton Wall. If anything he looked a bit cheerier than usual. _Perhaps particularly bad news has that effect on him_. Hermione's gaze drifted from Isaac to Argenta and Demelza, who had pulled up chairs and were sitting just to her left. They both looked rather perplexed.

'Do you want me to take minutes?' Demelza asked.

'Um … I don't know,' Hermione replied, rather disarmed by the question. Even though it was a perfectly fair one, she supposed.

In half a minute Demelza was back with a notebook. _They do things the non-magical way here, of course_.

'So …' Demelza began, once she had scribbled down several lines of notes on the page. 'What I've got so far is this: according to Hermione, the entire barrier between the magical and non-magical worlds seems to be slowly disintegrating and may already be full of holes.

There are probably far more potential openings to the wizarding world than just the seven Lillian Herrick claims to have found.

There is no known way of closing the holes or even finding them.

Isaac says that Hermione's theory is plausible, with the obvious conclusions to be drawn.'

'That about does it,' Isaac remarked.

'Still, we can't give up,' said Hermione.

'Oh, we won't give up.'

'Well, let's say it's true,' said Argenta, speaking for the first time. 'Why would it be happening?'

'Do you believe that the Separation is a real thing?' asked Hermione.

'I think it must be, yes,' Argenta replied.

'And the most plausible explanation of what we think it to be is kind of the sum of all magic?'

'A sort of intangible presence, but a very effective barrier,' put in Isaac.

'So why would it weaken now? What's changed?'

'Some wizards are bored of magic,' said Argenta.

'While people outside the wizarding world are more suspicious,' added Isaac.

'Exactly, which may be another strand to the Separation,' Hermione continued. 'Wizards and muggles are everywhere, but they're separated by their ability or inability to perceive magic. So muggles' inability to see magic and wizards' ability to prevent them from seeing magic is what keeps them apart.'

'So the barrier is under pressure from both sides,' said Isaac. 'Wizards are weakening it from one side and the witchfinders are pushing on it from the other.'

'Which is why there are more and more holes in the Separation, where the fabric of it has sort of grown thin and unravelled. Making it easier for Lillian Herrick to breach it,' said Hermione, her sentence rushing out and attaching itself to Isaac's.

'Although the door in Leftwich's shop, that really was once a gateway,' remarked Argenta.

'Yes, some really are gates, like Leftwich's and the Witches' March,' Hermione replied. 'But the others I've seen are more like places of residual magic that somehow went wrong. Like the grave of Louisa Kilham, who never knew she was a witch, or the yew tree in Ottery St Catchpole, which I can't account for at all. But who knows how many of them there are: seven, seventy or seven hundred.'

'Got all that?' said Argenta to Demelza.

'Of course,' replied Demelza, whose pen had already stopped moving.

'So what do you want to do?' asked Isaac.

'Well, the most important ones are the ones that Lillian knows about. So I have to keep on buying access to them.'

'With your own blood,' Argenta added. Hermione nodded.

'It isn't so bad,' she replied quietly.

'Speaking of Lillian Herrick,' said Isaac. 'We may have made some progress on identifying some more of her coven.'

'Really?' Hermione exclaimed.

He smiled at her, but it was the half-smile of someone not used to smiling.

'After what my cousin Simeon told us about his friend disappearing,' Isaac continued, 'we started trying to look for schools where pupils had disappeared or started acting strangely. Argenta unearthed a particularly interesting case at a school called the Greenfield School. It's in a west country market town called Totlingham. Ever heard of it?'

'Totlingham I've heard of,' said Hermione. 'There are wizards living there.'

'There's only one wizarding family, as far as we know,' said Argenta. 'And they're well integrated into the community. They'd heard about this missing schoolboy too.'

'Missing schoolboy?' said Hermione.

'I was just getting to that,' Argenta replied. 'Anyway, Isaac has spoken to the headmaster of the school.'

'And?' said Hermione eagerly.

'A little over three years ago,' Isaac began, 'there was an outbreak of interest in the occult, as the headmaster described it. Three students were particularly involved. One of them ran away from home and hasn't been seen since. The other two dropped out of school, but apparently still live in the local area. We're still trying to contact them. But the key detail is this: Lillian Herrick worked at the school.'

'My goodness,' said Hermione, her throat suddenly dry.

'We have a picture of the students,' Isaac continued, suddenly reaching into his desk and handing her a school photograph. 'I've ringed the students in question. You may have seen them before.'

Hermione looked closely, her heart beating rapidly. The three pupils marked out were a gentle-looking, but rather scruffy boy with dark brown hair, a studious-looking girl with black hair and glasses, and a handsome, but pallid boy with flowing dark hair and flashing blue eyes. Disappointment welled up immediately.

'I don't know them.'

She looked again at the picture. _But I've only seen three of her coven_.

'Which one disappeared?' she continued.

'This one,' said Isaac, pointing to the boy with flashing eyes. 'His name is Caleb Priestley.'

'And _she_ was working there?'

'Just for a year. Very popular with the pupils. Moved abroad, so the Headmaster told me. Which we know isn't true.'

'I suppose the police investigated?'

'Apparently suspicion fell on some quasi-religious new age group,' said Isaac.

'New age?' said Hermione. 'Has the Seven-Pointed Circle ever been called that?'

'The group had nothing to do with the Seven-Pointed Circle, and denied knowing anything about the three students. Nothing else happened, and the trail went cold.'

'What are the names of the other two students?'

'Rachel Thirlwell and Justin Pole.'

'And you said you haven't been able to track them down?'

'We've tracked down their families,' said Demelza. 'But we haven't been able to speak to them in person. Justin Pole could be said to be missing too, as his family doesn't know where he is at the moment. They didn't really want to say any more than that. But Rachel Thirlwell's mother was more helpful.'

'Demelza interviewed her herself,' Isaac remarked.

'Are you allowed to do things like that?' Hermione asked.

'Not exactly,' Demelza replied, slightly embarrassed. 'Don't tell Will Gash.'

'Not likely,' Hermione replied firmly.

'She sees her sometimes. Rachel Thirlwell's mother, I mean,' said Demelza, her expression darker. She flicked through her notebook. 'I can read to you what her mother says.'

'Ok,' Hermione replied.

'_I'm glad that someone is taking an interest in Rachel.' _Demelza began. '_Everyone seems to have washed their hands of her. Goodness knows we've tried, but we can't get through to her. She almost never speaks to us, except to ask for money. We don't even know where she lives. She just comes home now and then, completely out of the blue. I'll be upstairs, and all of a sudden I'll hear the key in the front door — she still has her key. I know it's her. I hope for some sign of improvement, but each time I come downstairs and find her sitting on the armchair you're sitting on now, pale and thin as a ghost, and smirking. She always seems to find it all so funny. 'I'm sorry to be asking you for money again,' she says, 'but I don't have enough to last until I next get paid. I know it's demeaning, but I'm desperate.' Desperate, she says, with a smile on her face. I ask her what she's doing. She stares at me and says 'don't ask me that,' or 'you know I can't tell you'. I try to make conversation, tell her a bit of gossip, such that it is, and she nods, looks around the room or out the window. Eventually I give her the money and she gets up to go. Sometimes she seems quite apologetic as she takes the money and stuffs it into her bag. I give her a hug — she's so thin — and she hugs me stiffly back. Then she just slips out. Then she's gone again for the next few months.'_

Demelza turned the page to a blank one.

'She said she changed really quickly,' she added.

'The Headmaster described Rachel Thirlwell as a very promising student, a really bright prospect, rigorous and very serious.'

The implication wasn't lost on Hermione.

'Caleb Priestley was also very bright, but rather troubled. Justin Pole was described as intelligent, but with some learning difficulties. Easily led astray, the headmaster said.'

'But do we know what actually happened?' Hermione asked.

Isaac nodded.

'Before the incident the three of them hadn't been friends. Then there was an incident in a class. Caleb Priestley was ejected from a class debate after it got out of hand. He had been making some very nihilistic statements, rather aggressively, and had particularly upset one of the other students, who had been arguing the reverse. The other student was Rachel Thirlwell. When the Headmaster subsequently spoke to her, she was oddly defiant, playing down the incident, seemingly defending this Caleb Priestley.'

'And this incident took place in Lillian Herrick's class?'

'That's right. After the incident the three of them suddenly became the best of friends. Then Caleb Priestley ran away and the other two seemed to go off the rails. Rachel Thirlwell's grades collapsed and both she and Justin Pole eventually dropped out of school. They claimed not to know where Caleb Priestley had gone.'

Hermione bit her lip.

'They're prime candidates to be members of her group,' she said finally.

'I would think so,' Isaac replied.

'It's interesting that this Rachel Thirlwell hasn't completely cut her ties to her family,' she commented. 'Maybe there's some hope for her.'

'Or it could be that this tormenting of the girl's family is intentional,' Isaac replied. 'But we'll keep trying to reach them.'

'Ok,' said Hermione. 'What can I do to help?'

'You've got enough on your plate as it is,' remarked Argenta.

'Yes, but I can't let you do my work for me,' Hermione replied, glancing at the time. 'Is there anything else?'

'One thing,' said Argenta. 'Mr Morley has summoned a meeting of all the top people in his 'Magic is Real' organisation, muggles and wizards. We reckon they're planning something.'

* * *

'She's lost the plot, man, I'm telling you.'

As if to emphasise his point Ron slammed his pint down on the counter and wiped his mouth. _He's getting through that a bit fast_. Harry took a more measured swig of his drink and turned to look at Ron. The stress was showing on his face. They had been through some talk about how much better things were now that Kingsley was back, and how Meredith Dulse, who had replaced Ron as keeper on the Gryffindor quidditch team, had joined the Holyhead Harpies on trial, but the conversation had soon shifted round to Hermione.

Ron had proposed they have a swift after-work pint in the vicinity of the Ministry, just the two of them, without the rest of the usual Auror crew. He had suggested a muggle pub, presumably to reduce the chances of being overheard or stared at.

It was standing room only; the two wizards were rammed up the far end of the bar, a young Audrey Hepburn looking down on them from a framed print on the wall. From the looks of the people around them, Ron had chosen the pub well: there didn't seem to be a wizard among them; just the usual young London crowd. On the other hand, this was the very pub Harry, Hermione and Armin had drunk in the night he and Hermione returned from France; Armin's bookshop was scarcely a hundred metres away. To Harry's knowledge Ron had never met Armin or been into his shop, although he knew well enough where Harry had worked during his lost year. The subject was still one best left alone.

'I can see it's taking a pretty serious toll on her,' Harry replied. He still wasn't sure how he was going to play this. He wanted to tell Ron to get a grip, that this was Hermione, that of course the threat was real, all of it: Lillian Herrick, the witchfinders, the Citadel too, although it was less clear to him than ever how they fitted into the picture. But that was just what Hermione didn't want him to do.

'Mum's getting quite worked up about it,' Ron added, once again reaching for his drink. 'Thinks I should confront Hermione.'

'You know what I think about your Mum, Ron, but is she the best person to advise you?'

'You're right, she isn't,' Ron replied. 'I'd rather you advise me.'

At this Harry took a larger swig.

'Do you really think you could convince Hermione that she's wrong?' Harry asked.

Ron looked glumly at the counter.

'No. I wish _you_ could.'

Harry gulped. _This is it. The proper lying's going to have to start._

'Do you think I still have that sort of influence over Hermione?'

Ron looked even glummer.

'No, I guess not.'

Harry patted him on the back, though he scarcely knew why.

'Harry,' Ron began, a changed look on his face, 'did you…'

'Did I what?'

'Did... anything happen between you and Hermione?'

_Where did that come from?_

'Ron, there's never been anything between me and Hermione. I thought you knew that.'

'I don't mean like that,' Ron continued. 'I mean what made you and her… you know, drift apart?'

'No, there was nothing specific,' said Harry. 'But Hermione's not exactly… accessible these days.'

'Tell me about it.'

'So where do you think this is all going to end?' Harry asked, in an attempt to steer the conversation back to where it had started.

Ron gave him his bleakest look yet.

'In St Mungo's, man, that's where I think it's going to end.'

'Really?'

'Really. Sometimes I think I should go up to her office and burn all her materials on the Seven-Pointed Circle.'

_I bet I know who's put that thought into your head_.

'Ron, seriously, can you imagine what Hermione would do if you did?'

It didn't bear thinking about. If anything was going to push Hermione over the edge, that would. He resolved to do whatever he had to in order to prevent it.

In the meantime Ron had finished his pint.

'Another one?' he said, turning to Harry. Harry still had a third of his to go.

'Nah, better just make it the one.'

'Ok,' said Ron. 'Maybe I'll get some pork scratchings, or peanuts. I love these muggle bar snacks.'

'Ever tried a pickled egg?'asked Harry with a wink.

'A pickled egg? Can't say I have. D'you reckon they do 'em here?'

'Sadly I doubt it,' Harry replied.

'I'll go and see what they've got,' said Ron, looking around the bar. Harry was just about to take another mouthful of his pint when he felt something move in his pocket. He looked down and eased the pocket open: a small piece of paper was in the process of folding itself up, first in two, now in four, now in eight. Harry looked around: Ron was ordering his bar snack, so he pulled out the note and unfolded it.

_Sorry to do this again: I'm going to enter your dream tonight so we can talk. I'll choose a more appropriate place this time. H._

* * *

In the dream Harry had paced his way from the main entrance of Hogwarts, to the Great Hall, then up to the Gryffindor common room and back out the doors into the grey night. The sky seemed to shrink from him as he went down from the gates, across that part of the school grounds that dropped away from the castle walls, down towards the lake.

The pebbles were uneven under his feet, the water motionless before him. It was a comforting thought that the towers of Hogwarts were at his back. The lake and all around it were silent and the moon was even vaster and brighter, sparkling faintly on its surface like a pale sun. The sky looked as though a snowstorm was about to begin. It was cold, and he was pleased to find that he was wearing a jacket, which he zipped up as high as it would go.

As he looked down the beach he could see a lone figure standing some way off, looking out over the water. A moment later the figure was gone. He set off over the pebbles towards where the figure had stood, his footing slipping on a number of occasions.

'Harry, wait,' said a voice behind him. He stopped dead and turned. _Hermione_. She was wearing a grey jacket, with a dark green scarf wrapped around her neck. Her eyes inspected him shyly. The cold weather seemed to have got inside her. She didn't reach out to embrace him, or even to touch him.

'I like your choice of meeting place,' he said. 'But did you have to make it so cold?'

'Sorry, it seemed more natural for it to be this way.'

'Yeah, you're right, sort of.'

The meeting felt strangely awkward. He wondered if that was because it was fake or real.

'Anyway,' she added, 'I like coming back here.'

'Life was simpler then?'

'Something like that.'

'I thought we weren't supposed to be speaking.'

'I know. I promised myself I wouldn't do this.'

Her tone was surprisingly deadpan. _I thought I was supposed to be used to the act by now._

'Do you have to be so hard on yourself?'

Something glimmered in her eyes.

'Yes I do. I can't allow myself to enjoy this.'

He scrutinised her, trying to glean whether she was entirely serious.

'If you like, we can keep this strictly to an exchange of information.'

She looked at him firmly.

'I don't like it. But we do need to share information.'

He decided he would play his usual role too.

'Fine by me.'

'There's one thing we should do first.'

'What's that?'

'Prove it's really us.'

'Ok.'

He reached into his pocket and pulled out the silver ring she had given him.

'You asked me to find some way of showing it to you. I didn't get a chance yet.'

She smiled for a moment. He offered her the ring, but she shook her head.

'No, you can keep it for the time being.'

He nodded and put it carefully back in his pocket.

'You should ask me now,' she said softly.

'Oh, ok,' he replied, trying to think of what to ask her. He glanced down at her wrist.

'Good idea to ask me that,' she replied, obviously seeing what he was thinking.

She smiled then lifted up her arm so that her sleeve slid back down towards her elbow. The wrist was pale, slim and bare.

'I always wear it.'

Just at the point where her sleeve had slipped down, the skin on her arm was torn and scabbed. Harry reached out and gently took hold of her forearm.

'Is that what I think it is?' he said, his eyes fixed on the scar.

'Oh that,' she replied. 'Yes, that's what she's doing to me. I mean — that's what I'm doing to myself.'

She looked up at him sadly.

'Is it worth it do you think?'

There was weariness in her eyes that he had never seen before. It was almost terrible to see. He looked up from her scarred arm to her sharp, morose eyes.

'You would never be doing this if it wasn't absolutely necessary.'

She sighed and looked out over the cold lake. Then she looked back and returned his gaze, her arm hanging limply by her side, pale and thin in the chill air.

'I think that's true,' she murmured. 'I'd better keep going to the bitter end.'

'It won't come to that. It didn't last time and it won't this time. You'll see.'

'You were given a reprieve,' she said, looking at him strangely. 'That was only possible because you were free of guilt. But I'm not. I'm up to my eyes in it already.'

'You're too harsh on yourself.'

He reached out and took her by the arm. She looked down at his hand where it gripped her between wrist and elbow. Then she looked up again. Her gaze was opaque.

'Do you feel bad about yourself, Harry?'

'Yes.'

'So do I,' she replied, with the smallest of smiles. Then she slipped out of his grasp. 'I've put you in an impossible position.'

'I agreed to this.'

'Yes, but I don't think we realised the consequences.'

_That's probably true_.

'Ron has been a bit off the last few days,' he said suddenly. 'Ever since we went to Threshold Island.'

She looked at him with interest.

'Did something happen there?'

'Nothing apart from interrogating the prisoners.'

'Do you think he suspects something?'

He shrugged.

'I don't know, I went for a quick drink with him this evening. He said he's even thought about destroying all your materials.'

Her eyes gleamed with interest.

'That I'd like to see.'

'Anyway,' Harry continued, 'What is there to suspect, really? This is all for their benefit anyway.'

She leaned a little closer to him.

'Maybe the others can see it after all, no matter how much we try to hide it.'

'I don't know,' he murmured. 'But when your scar bled, Ginny noticed that. Mine weeps sometimes.'

'Weeps?'

'Yeah. It did a little tonight as I was going to bed. Some sort of liquid leaks out of it. Not blood though.'

'That's strange,' she said. 'Maybe it's out of sympathy.'

'I don't know,' he said again. _She's a bit mawkish tonight_.

'By the way,' he continued, 'what happened that day in the woods? Why were you holding my wand? Or something that looked like it anyway?'

For a moment she seemed to be in a reverie.

'The Many are Warned put it there.'

'Right,' said Harry, looking a little bemused.

'It was done using the Circle,' she replied, her eyes glinting with interest. 'It was a nice little demonstration of what it can do.'

'So that was Lillian Herrick as well?'

She half-shrugged.

'Somehow it wasn't her style.'

'One of her minions then.'

'Or someone else entirely. There are others who can use the Circle.'

'What, do you think that the Many are Warned was somehow genuine?'

Suddenly her eyes froze in concentration.

'Someone's coming,' she said, her gaze still elsewhere. 'It must be Ron.'

Instinctively Harry looked around. The shoreline was empty.

'Not here,' she added. 'In the house. I'm going to have to go.'

The Black Lake had a pink hue with the moon and sky reflected in it. If he looked around he would see Hogwarts rising up behind them on the hills above the lake. There might be lights in the towers. But even if there were, behind the walls the castle was empty.

'Are you staying here?'

Her voice was insistent.

'No,' he replied distractedly. He didn't like it ending in that way.

'Goodbye then, Harry.' She looked at him sadly and reached and touched him gently on the arm. The next moment she was walking away. He listened to the sound of the pebbles beneath her footsteps growing fainter as she walked away along the line where the water gently lapped against the shore. Finally she disappeared altogether from the water's edge. He took one last look up at Hogwarts. _What a piece of work_. She had even gone to the trouble of putting lights in the towers.

* * *

She stood on the shore, waiting to see if he would come. _I shouldn't be doing this._ Conjuring a note in his pocket now struck her as ridiculously risky. She wouldn't have considered it if Caius hadn't mentioned that Ron and Harry were going for a drink after work.

She pushed her hands deeper into the pockets of her coat. It felt cold, genuinely cold. _Does that mean I'm getting better at this?_ She had never seen the lake so still. The sound of footsteps on the pebbles stole her gaze from the water's surface. _I'm not going to allow myself to touch him_.

'Hermione?'

She went towards him then stopped, waiting for him to reach her little stretch of beach. As he came close she started to reach out her hand. _Am I that weak willed?_

'Hi,' she said, in a voice that struck her as unnatural.

'Hi,' he replied, just as stiffly. 'I thought we weren't supposed to be speaking.'

_He doesn't look very happy._

'You're right. I know I must seem completely inconsistent after what I said to you last time. You might even suspect that I'm not who I say I am.'

He half-sniggered at this.

'Well, the thought did occur to me.'

'Quite right too. Do you want me to try and prove that it's really me?'

He ran his fingers through his hair and made a futile attempt to flatten it at the back.

'I can tell you're really Hermione.'

She couldn't help smile a little.

'How?'

'You're keeping your distance. Trying to stick to the terms of our pact. If she were impersonating you she'd be trying to get closer to me. Make what we're doing seem more guilty.'

She felt herself smile again. But it was a sad, feeble smile.

'You're right, she'd like that. Quite apart from the fact that the guiltier I feel, the more powerful I become in the Circle. She wants me to get more powerful. More like her. So I'm afraid I'm going to be really dull and business-like tonight. It's the only way I can justify this to myself.'

_God knows I feel guilty enough as it is_.

'I understand,' he replied, possibly a little disappointed. 'I'm not going to get upset about it.'

They looked at each other in silence.

'You're making progress, aren't you?'

'Sort of.'

'I bet you're being modest.'

'I don't know. Although I have found some things out about her. But to tell the truth, it's as much Isaac and Argenta as it is me.'

His face darkened a little.

'They get to help you. How am I supposed to help you, Hermione? Give me something to do.'

She shot him a rather pained look.

'I don't know, Harry. I understand you want to help, and I'm glad you do. But it would almost be like a form of cheating.'

'I won't insist. I don't want to upset you.'

'Thanks.'

'All I can do is try and read up on the Seven-Pointed Circle whenever I have time on my own. That way I at least sort of have the feeling I'm helping you.'

'That's bound to be useful.'

He hung his head.

'I don't know how much longer I can keep this up.'

_Don't say that, Harry_.

'I mean, has it come to this? It seems like dreams are the only place we can meet these days. Sometimes I can barely remember why we're even doing this.'

She touched his arm. _I don't care; I can't let him lose hope_.

'Harry, don't give in now. Maybe circumstances will change somehow. I want them to change. But for now there really is no other way.'

'You mean: we've dug our grave, so we'd better lie in it.'

She couldn't summon a reply. The image was a little hard to stomach.

'Is it not worth considering,' he continued, 'that maybe it would be better if we just told everyone what was going on?'

She frowned at this.

'What, do you mean tell everyone we've been pretending all along?'

He exhaled irritably.

'Well granted, that's probably not the best approach. We could say that you came to see me as a last resort and showed me all the evidence you'd found about Lillian Herrick and the witchfinders, and that you'd convinced me after all that we all need to work together to stop them.'

Her scarf had started to unravel, leaving her neck half-exposed. Feeling the cold on her throat, she reached down to wrap it back around her. Her hand was trembling slightly, she noticed.

'It would pretty much mean going back to square one. Back to the old problems. But more than that, it would be based on a lie.'

'I see what you mean, of course I do. But even so, everything would be out in the open.'

_Oh God, are things starting to unravel?_

'I … I'll give it some thought.'

He stuffed his hands in his pockets, a slightly downcast expression on his face.

'So what was it you found out?'

'Um … we think we've identified three more members of the Circle.'

His eyes widened with interest.

'Wow. That's significant.'

'Again, it was Isaac and Argenta that did all the detective work. Even Demelza. So I can't take any of the credit for it.'

'I have to admit I'm jealous of them.'

'Harry, stop.'

Her voice was low and breathless, as if she scarcely had any more energy to speak.

'Sorry, you're right. What are you going to do about them?'

She sighed again.

'I don't really think I can do anything about them. I don't want to fight them and I seriously doubt that there's anything I could say or do to make them leave Lillian. But if I can understand why she chose them, maybe I can understand better how she works. I have to do anything I can to arm myself against her.'

He reached out and touched her arm. When she looked at him there was a distant look in his eyes.

'I suppose there's no way of reasoning with her,' he said gently. 'She must be genuinely insane.'

She laughed emptily.

'That's just it. She isn't. There's something strangely reasonable about her. Sometimes I almost think she's sorry about what she's doing. And yet that's exactly why she continues. It's like she has to do wrong.'

His fingers were gripping her arm a little too tightly, digging into her skin through her coat and sweater.

'And drag you down with her.'

'Yes, but I have to keep going no matter what. What I don't get is whether I'm supposed to defeat her or lose to her.'

He looked at her sadly. Tiny flakes of snow seemed to hang in the air around them.

'I can't help you there,' he said at last. 'I can't get near enough to you. If I could maybe I'd help you find a way to deal with her. Save her or destroy her, whatever has to be. Like you said.'

She reached out her hand to touch his. _Just for an instant_.

'You will help me before this is all over.' Then she lowered her hand.

He smiled to himself.

'Promises, promises.'

She looked at him quizzically, not quite grasping his meaning. _He's not quite with me. I think this might claim even our friendship._

'It's cold,' he said. 'Even imaginary cold is cold.'

She nodded.

'I don't even know if it's by accident or design.'

'I should stop encroaching on your sleep,' he said suddenly. 'We should both get some rest.'

'Are you sure?,' she replied. She wasn't quite ready to let him go. 'There are other things we haven't discussed.'

'I think Ginny's stirring,' he added, taking a step back. 'But we can do this again. In another creation of yours. If you really want to, that is. I'm not all that useful to you at the moment anyway.'

She wanted to respond, but he was already gone. She stared into the space he had just left empty, wondering if he would fill it again. But nothing moved: the snowflakes seemed fixed in the air and the water didn't break on the shore.


	35. The vigilance of Hermione Granger - Ch13

13\. A private investigation

Harry pushed firmly on his front door and stepped out into the sunlight. It was a little too bright and warm for autumn. As he reached the end of his garden path he looked back for a moment. The red brick façade of his house rose up smartly before him, its windows sombre and impassive and its tall chimney reaching into the sky. After a few moments he turned back and opened the gate onto the street. He was halfway down the road when the door of a parked car swung open in front of him. He was already reaching for his wand when a familiar voice emanated from inside the car:

'Bit edgy, aren't you?'

Harry looked down at the car. It was a gleaming black Ford Granada, probably from the 1980s. It reminded him of detective shows he had been allowed to watch from time to time as a child at the Dursleys. A collector's item, some would call it. But for its current owner it didn't have associations like that. It was just _a smart-looking muggle car_. Its owner was frequently beeped at on the roads by car enthusiasts and on one occasion had been invited to take part in a car rally. He slid down into the passenger seat, the old leatherette squeaky beneath him.

'What would you do if someone in a black car suddenly throws open the door right in front of you?'

Ron Weasley glowered at him from the driver's seat.

'Expecting to be arrested, were you?'

Harry grinned and shook Ron's hand.

'Seriously, Ron, what is this about? Don't you do knocking on people's front doors? Have you done something to annoy Ginny?'

'It's nothing like that. I just wanted a private chat with you.'

'A private chat? You're not exactly incognito in this car, are you?'

'What's wrong with my car?'

'Nothing at all, it's an absolute gem of a car. But it does stand out a bit.'

'That's why I parked down the road.'

Harry shrugged.

'How's Hermione?' he said after a moment's thought. The night-time conversation with her had left him with a feeling of unease.

'Better,' was the extent of Ron's reply, which Harry responded to with an equally terse 'good'.

Ron started up the engine and the car glided smoothly away from the curb. He prided himself on his driving skills, which were unassisted by magic. Magic had, on the other hand, been used extensively to bring the car back to life after he had acquired it from a scrap metal dealer.

'Anyway, this is a good place for a talk: nice and private. And driving clears my mind.'

'What is on your mind?' said Harry, as the car passed down the high street.

'Open the glove compartment,' said Ron, not taking his eyes off the road.

Harry obeyed. Rammed inside the glove compartment was a file. He took out the file and looked quizzically at Ron. Ron nodded and returned his eyes to the road.

'Now I really feel like I'm in a detective show,' muttered Harry, opening the file. Ron made no reply. The title of the document was not all that promising.

'Internal audit, Muggle Relations, 1993,' Harry read, not managing to summon up much enthusiasm.

'Page 16,' said Ron breezily.

Harry turned to page 16.

'_During the reference period, the threat posed by the activities of so-called witchfinders has been shown to be insubstantial._

_Recommendation: that Isaac Edwards' service contract on the investigation of para-magical activities be terminated.'_

'A few pages on, you'll find a memo,' continued Ron in the same tone.

Harry leafed through the report until he came to a separate document, entitled 'Memorandum of the Chamber of Wands'. The document dated from 1995.

' _I. Edwards, para-magical investigator, presented evidence that so-called witchfinders were harassing genuine wizards and seeking ways to penetrate magical sites like Diagon Alley. On the basis of the evidence presented, the Chamber of Wands has decided to suspend the proposed termination of the contract and instead to extend the mandate for para-magical activities.'_

'It's happened before?' Harry remarked.

'Possibly,' said Ron. 'Or this is the story that Isaac Edwards puts about to justify keeping his contract. And another thing: take a look at the signature at the bottom,' he added laconically.

Harry looked down the document. It was signed, 'Cornelius Fudge, Minister of Magic and Chairman of the Chamber of Wands.'

'What's this all about?' he said finally, looking up from the page. The car was on a slip road, apparently leading onto a motorway.

'Hey, where are we going?' he added, looking around him with a slightly bewildered air.

'You'll see in a little bit,' said Ron mysteriously. 'Thought I'd do Hermione the courtesy of looking into this witchfinder business.'

_This is new._

'Has Hermione seen this?'

Ron coughed.

'I imagine she's read everything there is to know about witchfinders.'

'I suppose that means no.'

'I'm not checking up on her,' Ron retorted. 'I'm trying to understand all this for myself. It's much better if I understand it myself rather than have her explain it all to me.'

Harry began to turn over pages in the file, but without really looking at them.

'And what do these documents tell us?'

'Two things: first, if Isaac Edwards doesn't talk up the threat of witchfinders, he's likely to lose his contract with the Ministry. Second, Isaac Edwards was saved from the chop by none other than Cornelius Fudge.'

Harry looked at the signature of Cornelius Fudge. The man did not inspire any particularly fond memories.

'And what have you concluded?' said Harry.

'I haven't concluded anything,' replied Ron. 'Not on the basis of those documents. They're just pieces of evidence. May or may not be conclusive.'

Harry glanced out of the window. His dealings with Isaac Edwards had been very limited, but he rather admired the man's dour eccentricity. And he was Hermione's main ally against the witchfinders. Still, what Ron had unearthed left a slightly bad taste in his mouth.

'Keep looking,' said Ron, and Harry turned over the page. The next document was much more recent, dating from three years earlier. It was an extract from something called the _Register of returned wands_, issued by the Magical Objects Repository.

'Look for the section entitled _Wands returned voluntarily_,' said Ron.

Harry leafed through the document until he found the relevant section.

'Look down the list of names,' said Ron.

Harry glanced down the list, which recorded the name of the wizard who had voluntarily surrendered his or her wand, the date, and the reason.

'Any names you recognise?' said Ron.

'Not really,' said Harry as he looked down the list, 'but I see you've put an asterisk next to some of them: Charlie Skelton … Poppy Bailey … Chloe Goodwin (née Beaumont)… Nathan Warren … '

'That's right,' said Ron. 'Do you know who they are?'

'Charlie Skelton I know,' said Harry. 'Not the others though.'

'They're all names of people that witchfinder liaison has fingered as working for this Mr Morley. Hermione told me their names herself. Those are just the names I remembered. There are probably more on that list.'

'Right,' said Harry.

'Do you see the problem?' said Ron.

Harry looked at the names.

'That these people are all recorded as having handed in their wands,' replied Harry.

'Exactly,' said Ron. 'Why would they voluntarily give up their wands, why didn't they just keep hold of them? No one was going to catch them and take away their wands. So how could they all be wielding wands again, doing magic for the Witchfinder?'

'I don't know,' said Harry. 'Maybe they just got new wands?'

_Like from that dodgy wand dealer_.

'From where?' said Ron. 'They could buy one in a wand shop, but only if your old one was broken and can't be mended, and anyway there would be a record of it. Or they could take it off another wizard in a duel or something, but you can bet the first thing a wizard would do if someone took their wand off them would be to report it. '

'They could take it off a dead wizard,' said Harry.

'Have you heard of many reports of wizards being murdered?' said Ron.

Harry shook his head. The Auror Office had less work than it used to. Which in that respect was a good thing.

'Murdered, no. Very few cases. But disappeared, yes, there are plenty of wizards who just disappear. Those cases are still open.'

Ron frowned.

'Fair enough,' he replied. 'Maybe the people on that list have got new wands and are using magic to serve muggles who want to expose all wizards, but it's a little bit odd, don't you think? Why go to the trouble of giving up your wand just to get another one that's not yours in the first place?'

'I see your point,' said Harry.

'And another thing,' said Ron. 'Why would wizards work for muggles to expose us? What's in it for them really? Hermione hasn't come up with a good reason. She said maybe they're wizards who have a grudge against other wizards. Maybe some do, but why work for a witchfinder? If these muggles hate wizards as much as Hermione or Isaac Edwards think, why would these traitor wizards get any better treatment from them?'

'That's probably true,' said Harry. 'But maybe they've cut a deal with the witchfinders. Maybe they've been promised something once they succeed in exposing us.'

'Maybe,' Ron replied. 'But let's say they expose us. What then?'

'Ah, who knows?'

'Exactly. And who's to say that it would really be that bad?'

_You haven't met them. I definitely don't have a good feeling about what they would want to do with us. _

The car turned off the motorway. They passed under a flyover, before turning onto a typical, edge of town trading estate road lined with warehouses, garden centres, kitchen showrooms and some drive-in fast food restaurants. Their surroundings didn't seem like the sort of place for Auror work.

'Where are we now?' said Harry, looking around. 'Are we stopping off for a burger or something?'

'You'll see,' said Ron in a business-like tone. The road turned to the left, passing behind a large discount clothing store. The road ended at what looked like the gates to a cemetery. On the right of the gates was the crematorium, a low brick building with a chimney. Ron parked the car just along the street from the cemetery gates. He looked keenly through the windscreen.

'Are we waiting for someone?' Harry asked.

'Oh, just the witchfinder,' said Ron blithely, checking the time on the dashboard clock.

'What?' Harry exclaimed. 'How do you know he's coming here?'

'Hermione had it written down on a piece of paper. _Mr Morley, Kennetford Cemetery, every Saturday, 11 o'clock_.'

'You went through her things?'

'No,' Ron retorted. 'She had it pinned to the noticeboard in her room.'

'You should be getting overtime for this,' Harry muttered. 'Witchfinder liaison could do with extra staff, so I heard.'

'They didn't want my help. That Argenta Coyle just sat there smirking at me the whole time. Didn't give me any information at all. Pretty much accused me of being more interested in checking up on Hermione than in the movements of this Mr Morley. I could try talking to Demelza, but I don't think they let her do much.'

'Hang on,' said Harry, grabbing Ron by the arm. 'That's him, isn't it?'

'You should know better than me,' Ron replied. 'You've seen him, haven't you?'

'Yeah, I've seen him.'

Mr Morley climbed out of the driver's seat of a black Mercedes and began to stride towards the cemetery gates. A tall, handsome man with blonde, tousled hair got out of the passenger seat, glanced around him, then followed Morley inside.

'That's Skelton,' said Harry, squinting through the windscreen. He remembered him from Montparnasse cemetery. 'Don't you recognise him from the Gryffindor common room?

'Now you come to mention it...' Ron replied.

'They always have a wizard with them,' Harry remarked.

'I don't know, do they?' Ron asked.

He remembered Hermione telling him the night they had slept above Armin's shop.

Ron opened the door and began to get out.

'What, are we just going to follow them in there?' said Harry. 'Don't you think they'll see us? We're not exactly unknowns in the wizarding world.'

Ron shot him a sidelong glance.

'You're right. But say these people are plotting the downfall of all wizards. That means they'll be expecting to be followed. Only the Ministry is hardly going to send the most famous wizard in the country to do their undercover work.'

'Nicely reasoned,' said Harry. 'Hermione has had an influence on you after all.'

Ron scowled.

'I thought of that on my own! Why does Hermione get the credit if I say anything clever?'

'Sorry. You're right. It's a subtle piece of thinking. Let's hope it's right.'

'That's just it,' grumbled Ron. 'She thinks I lack subtlety.'

Harry decided to drop the matter.

'Let's go then,' he said instead. 'Otherwise we'll never find them in there. But it's best we stay out of sight.'

'Ok,' Ron grumbled.

They got out of the car and passed in through the gates. The main avenue of the cemetery stretched out in front of them. Mr Morley and his companion were some way ahead. About halfway down the avenue they turned off to the left. Harry and Ron followed at a safe distance.

'No magic,' Harry hissed to Ron.

'Why not?'

'Because Skelton's job must be to keep an eye out for people like us, particularly anyone doing magic nearby.'

That was another theory that Hermione had imparted to him that night in London.

They took a turning to the right and stopped in front of a substantial family vault that largely shielded them from sight. In the distance they could make out Mr Morley standing solemnly and looking down at a gravestone. Charlie Skelton stood a few metres away from him, respectfully looking in another direction. Mr Morley crouched down so that he was close to the gravestone. Then he put his hand on the top of the marble headstone. He seemed to say a few words, but they were far too far away to make them out. Finally he stood up again, ran his hand through his wiry hair then looked around him rather bleakly. He seemed for a moment to look in their direction, but his stare seemed to pass through and beyond them. Then he walked briskly away, for a time moving in their direction. All this time, Ron and Harry were busy reading the names on the mausoleum, hidden from view. Mr Morley and his companion turned back onto the main avenue and passed out back through the gates. After a couple of minutes Ron and Harry emerged onto the main avenue themselves.

'Did you see which grave he visited?' Ron asked.

'I did,' Harry replied. 'But I wonder, what if Skelton cast a detection charm over the area by the grave, just in case he had a hunch they were followed.'

'Do you reckon he saw us?'

'I don't think so, but I suppose he's a professional when it comes to surveillance.'

'I didn't see him cast any charm,' Ron murmured. 'Though I suppose he could hide it easy enough.'

Harry scratched the back of his neck.

'I reckon we could still read the name on the headstone from the next row back. What do you think?'

'If you think it's a good idea,' Ron concurred.

They made their way quickly towards the area of the grave, glancing back down the main avenue in case Mr Morley or Charlie Skelton had come back. But there was no sign of anyone. Deliberately they passed the row that Mr Morley had visited and took the following one instead. As he spotted the headstone they were looking for, Harry stopped so that they were standing just diagonally of the grave plot. The inscription read:

_Camelia Isabelle Morley_

_1969-1996_

'She was a relative,' Harry said in a low voice.

'Wife or sister, what do you reckon?' said Ron.

'I don't know. Could be either,' Harry replied. 'I bet this has got something to do with why he doesn't like wizards.'

'What, do you reckon she was killed by a Death Eater or something?'

'1996? It's not impossible I suppose, but that was around the time when the Death Eaters were laying low. But that might not be the reason at all.'

'Still,' said Ron, 'the bloke can't be a complete and utter lunatic if he comes and visits his sister's or wife's grave every week.'

'It's a nice gesture, I agree,' said Harry. 'But if he holds wizards responsible for her death, imagine what sort of a grudge he has against us.'

Still, he had to admit that seeing this side of Mr Morley had slightly improved his opinion of him.

'I seem to remember that Charlie Skelton being a bit of a tosser,' said Ron as they reached the car. 'I didn't think Gryffindor accepted people like him.'

'What about McLaggen?' Harry replied. 'He's hardly a good advert for Gryffindor either.'

'McLaggen,' Ron snorted. 'I'd forgotten about him.'

Harry took one last glance around: the black Mercedes was gone.

'There's something else I want to show you,' said Ron as they got into the car. 'It's back at the house.'

'Your house?' said Harry.

'No, Malfoy Manor. Of course my house.'

'Won't Hermione be there?'

Ron looked slightly sheepish.

'Probably she will, but she'll be up in her office. I doubt we'll even see her.'

Harry nodded and put his seat belt on. _I'm not sure this is a good idea._

Ron and Hermione's house was further into the country than Harry and Ginny's, so Ron was required to speed up the journey through the use of some magically operated machinery he had acquired from the people who ran the Knight Bus. Before long they were on the familiar country lanes around Chase End. The village was scattered along a lane that twisted left and right several times before they reached Ron's house, which was set much further back from the road, behind a tall hedge. Ron turned off the road and rolled his car slowly down the driveway before parking in front of his garage. As they got out of the car Harry looked up at the house. Hermione's office was located above the garage. There was no light on, but the afternoon was bright and warm. Ron opened the garage door.

'We're going straight in this way?' said Harry.

'Yeah,' replied Ron. 'What I want to show you is in here anyway.'

They stepped inside and Ron turned on the light with a switch of his wand. Ron's garage looked rather similar to his father's workshop at the Burrow, cluttered with all manner of muggle artefacts. Ron went over to his workbench and opened a small drawer beneath the work surface. He pulled out another document, but this one was visibly older, its cardboard file faded and scuffed.

'This one's about the Seeing Circle, or the Circle of Sie, or whatever other names it might be known as.'

Ron handed Harry the file. The first thing he noticed when he opened it was the date: the file was thirty years old. Its title read: _An investigation into muggle quasi-magic_. The report detailed all manner of occult activities from around the world, labelling them as 'hoaxes', 'folk religions', 'shamanism' and 'cults'. Towards the end of the report was a section on 'The Seeing Circle'. The text covered no more than about half a page.

'_The Seeing Circle is the most recent manifestation of a form of mind control thought to date back several thousand years and which originated, as far as anyone can tell, in Anatolia during the Kingdom of Urartu._

_It's thought that the mind control techniques in question were first written down in a work entitled 'The Testament of Sie', also known as 'The Circle of Sie', 'The Seven-pointed Circle', 'The Empty Book', 'The Path' and 'The Priest's Confession'. The original text is lost, and the earliest known version is in an early version of Armenian. The work has been translated into several languages over the centuries and millennia, but has been little read and is little known, largely due to the obscure and difficult nature of the techniques it describes. _

_The Seeing Circle was also the name of a group of stage conjurers and illusionists established in the 1930s. Mastery of the technique of the Circle of Sie, from which they took their name, enabled its members to perform acts of telekinesis and telepathy that could not otherwise be explained by any of the usual tricks of stage magic._

_In the case of the Seeing Circle, stage magic was a cover for a series of robberies, kidnaps and even murders committed by its members. The members of the group were arrested in 1934 after one of them denounced them to the muggle authorities. There have been no other documented uses of the techniques described in 'The Testament of Sie' since that time._

_Classification: initially shamanistic, but adopted to profane purposes._

_Level of threat: low' _

Harry looked up from the page. Ron was watching him closely.

'What do you think?' he said at last.

'You seem to be building up a fairly solid case that Hermione's overreacting,' replied Harry. He wasn't sure if his remark came out as serious or flippant, but he thought he saw a smile flicker over Ron's lips.

'You think it's solid, do you?' came the response.

'I don't know,' said Harry. 'Like you said, this is all circumstantial. But it's just enough to create doubts.'

'Doubts, exactly,' was Ron's laconic reply. Harry looked at him, trying to decipher his expression. He couldn't.

'On the other hand,' he continued. 'The Seven-Pointed Circle has been used to pretty deadly effect in the past: murder, kidnapping.'

'That's true, replied Ron, 'but against muggles, not against wizards.'

'Do you think wizards would fare any better?' said Harry.

'I don't know, but there's a lot of what ifs in all this,' said Ron. 'Two years this has been going on, two years Hermione's been obsessed by it, and nothing's happened. You know that Kingsley told the muggle relations people to look into it.'

'I remember,' Harry replied.

'And you know they found pretty much nothing.'

Harry recalled what had happened two years earlier quite clearly: when Ministry investigators visited the flat in East London that Hermione and Caius had been taken to, the headquarters of MIR were no longer there. Charlie Skelton had apparently gone abroad and Chloe Goodwin was living a quiet suburban life married to a muggle. An incognito investigator who tracked down Stephen Morley and interviewed him had reported back that he was a harmless crank. The French equivalent of the Ministry of Magic had sent an official letter stating that it had no links with the League of Witchfinders. And there was no trace of Lillian Herrick.

'I know the details,' said Harry. 'But was Mortimer Knott the best person to investigate the case? He's never struck me as being someone who takes muggles seriously.'

'Who else could Kingsley send? Knott's the one in charge of muggle relations. He could have asked old Isaac Edwards to do the investigation. But he didn't. Which probably shows how seriously they took Hermione's allegations to begin with.'

'You mean, they thought it was too serious to give the case to Isaac Edwards?'

'Exactly. And in any case, we know what Edwards would have said anyway. They needed to send someone who wasn't biased.'

'Even so,' said Harry, 'if this had been an Auror case, it would have been done differently.'

Ron scratched his chin.

'Yeah, well some parts of the Ministry are run better than others.'

They both fell silent. It was Ron who spoke first.

'Honest opinion, Harry,' he began. 'What should I do?'

'About Morley?' said Harry.

'About Hermione.'

Harry dropped his gaze somewhat.

'I don't know,' he replied, 'I'm not really the best person to ask.'

Ron frowned slightly.

'I understand that,' he said with a sigh. 'But still …'

'Well,' Harry began, 'how much would it cost you to humour her?'

Ron's expression darkened.

'What do you think I've been doing for the past two years? What you mean is, you think she's right.'

'I didn't say that,' retorted Harry. 'I understand what you mean: we've looked for signs that something is happening, signs like there were when Voldemort was on the rise.'

'And found nothing,' added Ron. 'Believe me, I wish we had found something, I really do. Not that I hope that a major attack on wizards is being planned, but for Hermione's sake, I mean. There are witchfinders who go on shouting about witchcraft as they always have, but they're all on the other side of the wall. And this Lillian Herrick is invisible, or to everyone except Hermione. People are talking about her at the Ministry, Harry. You know they are.'

Harry nodded. The friendlier comments suggested that she had suffered a burn-out. The less friendly ones suspected her of being a Citadel supporter, or even a member. Some suggested that her paranoia was ordering on mental illness.

'I don't know how many times I've defended her,' Ron continued. 'And she's not doing me any favours. Plus she's a complete misery to be around. When she's even around, that is. What's she doing? She's even driven you away, of all people.'

Harry glanced around the room.

'I wouldn't say she's driven me away,' he began. 'It's true that she's isolated herself … from most people really. But then again, Lilian Herrick's threats seemed pretty convincing, at least they did two years ago.'

'Two years ago, you said it yourself,' said Ron. 'You've been able to get on with your life, with Ministry business. Hermione's completely obsessed.'

Harry looked hard at Ron. _I hate doing this._

'But if you've been threatened,' he began, running his hand through his hair with a twitchy sort of gesture, 'even if years go by, how can you ever know whether the threat is going to come true or not? Can you ever really put it out of your mind?'

Suddenly they heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs.

'Someone's coming,' said Ron, who with a deft swish of his wand shifted a pair of cricket pads from a shelf onto the table so that they covered the papers.

Unnerved by Ron's sudden movement, Harry started towards the door, only to find a wand pointing at his face.

'Oh it's you!' said Hermione in a startled voice, lowering her wand and staring at Harry. Harry returned the look, saying nothing. Hermione's gaze turned to Ron, who was standing alongside the workbench with his hands in his pockets.

'What are you doing?' she asked in a low voice. Tiredness was etched into her face.

'I was getting Harry to go over the rules of cricket,' said Ron in an attempt at nonchalance.

Hermione's eyes shifted back to Harry for a moment, and looked at him with a questioning expression. Then she looked back at Ron.

'I could have told you the rules of cricket,' she replied.

'Well, I thought you were probably busy,' said Ron, with an undertone of sarcasm. Her eyes narrowed slightly, but she said nothing.

'There's something suspect going on here,' she announced finally, in the same neutral tone.

Harry looked vacantly at Ron, who looked back at him with a slightly apologetic air.

'What would you say?' he began, suddenly addressing Hermione, 'if I told you that Harry had just been trying to convince me to join Mr Morley's crusade against wizards?'

She looked at him quizzically as she processed the information.

'Well first of all I'd wonder why you were so eager to rat on a friend.' she replied evenly. 'After that I'd probably have to kill the pair of you.'

Harry couldn't resist smiling. Ron seemed a little less amused.

'Charming,' he replied.

'I didn't hear you come in,' she said in a more neutral tone.

'Yeah, well Harry and I went for a drive,' said Ron. Harry nodded in confirmation.

'Did you go anywhere interesting?'

'Nowhere in particular,' replied Ron. 'A little excursion, that's all. Just a bit of fun.' The stress in the sentence seemed to fall on the last word. Hermione glanced at Harry, as if to see if he had anything to add. All Harry could do was to look back at her with a serious expression. She looked back at Ron.

'That sounds nice,' she said finally, without much conviction.

'I'm going to get something to drink,' Ron announced suddenly. 'Do you want anything?'

Hermione looked slightly surprised.

'No thanks,' she replied.

'Harry?'

'I'll have a beer please,' said Harry. His reply came out too loudly.

'Good answer,' said Ron, who slunk off to the kitchen.

Harry and Hermione stood in silence in the garage, each rooted to the spot.

'Are things always so tense around here?' he said instead, almost catching himself by surprise.

'I don't know what you mean,' she said in a voice of mock sweetness.

'I'm sure Ron means well,' he replied.

'I know he means well. He just doesn't take me seriously.'

He considered for a moment whether or not to tell Hermione about Ron's research. There was probably nothing in what he had uncovered that would be new to her or sway her thinking, but he couldn't think of anything else.

'Maybe Ron takes you more seriously than you think.'

She looked quizzically at him.

'What do you mean?'

'Maybe it wouldn't take much for you to get him on your side.'

At that moment the kitchen door slammed, and Ron's footsteps could be heard in the corridor approaching the garage. She jumped slightly and looked over her shoulder.

'There's a fundamental flaw there,' she said, looking back at Harry. 'Ron finds it hard to admit I'm right, and I find it equally hard to admit that he's right.'

Ron was fumbling with the garage door and noisily dropped a can of beer on the floor.

'I have to ask you something,' Hermione said quickly. 'Did we speak the other night?'

'Yes,' Harry replied.

Ron could be heard cursing to himself behind the door.

'Thank goodness,' said Hermione. 'I was worried that…'

The door started to open.

'Are you sure you're …' he began.

'Please don't ask me if I'm alright,' she replied, lowering her voice to a taut murmur. 'I can't bear to have people ask me that anymore.'

Ron walked in, two cans of beer in his arms, putting an end to the conversation. He found Hermione and Harry frowning at each other slightly across the table.


	36. The vigilance of Hermione Granger - Ch14

14\. Afternoon of the witch-hunters

A town more likely to lull a wizard into complacency would be hard to imagine: the secluded streets of Totlingham breathed affluence and ease, its heritage palpable in the sympathetically restored old buildings that dotted every square, lane and alley, while its slightly genteel inhabitants browsed its quaint shops and enjoyed leisurely lunches in its pubs and restaurants.

Water was ever-present in the town, its medieval centre crammed into a finger of land overlooking the River Severn. Every street and lane that ran off its High Street and Market Square ran towards the riverbank, to the north shore and south shore, as locals called them. On the north shore, the wharves housed a marina and fishermen's cottages that served as second homes for boat owners, while the south shore was taken up by a river walk, overlooked by extensive Georgian and Victorian villas. A network of narrow lanes extended out beyond its medieval core, lined with Georgian and Victorian houses, interspersed with sympathetically built modern houses.

Totlingham was Florian Whittaker's adopted hometown: in the fifteen years he and his wife Dora had lived there, they had managed to raise two talented magical children. He commuted every day to the Ministry of Magic in London; she ran a successful owl order business from an office in the attic of their house.

Florian Whittaker was tall and thin, with greying reddish hair, round glasses and a slightly ruddy complexion. There was nothing about his dress or demeanour that gave him away to the muggles. Overall he exuded an air of propriety and solid education, much like many of the inhabitants of the town.

He was on a couple of days leave from the Ministry. After running an errand for his wife, he had been at liberty to wander the town centre, browsing in the odd antique shop, or drinking a pint in one of its many ancient inns. Dora had been good enough to tell him not to hurry back. _You need a little time to yourself dear_, she had said that morning over a leisurely breakfast. By lunchtime of that day, his owls had all been dispatched and the books were up to date, so he had strolled into the old town for a spot of lunch and what the muggles called a real ale. Having finished lunch, he had dropped into his favourite antique shop a few crooked gable ends down from the White Horse Hotel. He never ceased marvelling at the myriad strange devices invented by the muggles over the centuries to carry out tasks a wizard could solve with the merest wave of a wand. He was on his way back home, a small silver cigarillo box weighing down his pocket as he went.

A common ringed by a tall, ancient wall separated the water-bound old town from its more recent districts. Florian Whittaker's route home took him past the lower side of the common, along a quiet stretch of road lined by a row of tall Victorian houses.

A young woman was leaning against the wall, mobile phone in hand. She looked to be gazing up at one of the houses on the other side, or perhaps even up into the sky. His footsteps on the cobbled road announced his presence, making her look round lazily at him. _Did she just smile at me? Surely unlikely. Those days are gone._ His pace slowed for no particular reason other than that the effects of his lunch had started to creep up on him. The road began to slope very slightly uphill, slowing his pace further. Another figure gradually came into sight, coming down the hill in his direction. It was a man of around forty, unshaven with close-cropped hair and wearing a tracksuit. He stared off into the distance as he passed by. At that point Florian felt a fleeting movement at his side. Although the feeling was almost indiscernible, he instinctively reached into his pocket. The cigarillo box was gone — the man in the tracksuit must have stolen it!

The fear of confronting the thief made him hesitate. Then the fear melted away, replaced by anger at the man's brazen cheek. He turned sharply — the thief was no more than a few metres away down the street.

'Hey, stop there!' He called out in a steely tone of outrage. The thief paused and turned back to face him, the hint of a smirk on his face.

'You just pickpocketed me!' said Florian, striding down the road towards the thief, 'I felt it.'

'Is that right?' said the thief, an amused look on his face. 'And what am I supposed to have taken?'

'A silver cigarillo box,' replied Florian.

'What's a cigarillo box?'

'Have a look in your pocket and you'll see just what it looks like.'

The man reached deliberately into the trouser pocket of his tracksuit. He seemed to feel around for something in his pocket, then pulled his empty hand out and held it up.

'Nothing in my pocket, mate,' he replied curtly.

'I don't believe you,' said Florian, now certain that the man was the thief.

'Well, I'm certainly not going to let you rummage around in my pocket, if that's what you're hoping for. What's more, you haven't got any witnesses, so I suggest you get lost before you make me lose my temper.'

Florian was seething. At the mention of witnesses, he glanced around for the young woman he had seen earlier, but she had gone. Then a thought presented itself to him: _I'll make him turn out his pockets_. He wouldn't have to lay a finger on the man. He had the power to make him do whatever he said.

'You turn out your pockets now,' he replied, his voice colder and calmer. 'Or I'll empty them myself.'

The thief scowled.

'If you try sticking your hand in my pocket, I'll cut it off,' he replied, no longer amused.

_There's nothing else for it_. _The Muggle will learn the hard way_.

He fingered his wand, which lay still in his pocket.

'Accio cigarillo box', he said. The words slid gently out of his mouth into the empty street. Suddenly it struck him how preposterous the words sounded together. He regretted saying them, regretted even buying the object in the first place. But the incantation worked and the cigarillo box lifted itself out of the thief's pocket and floated towards Florian with an almost jovial bounce.

The man was running in the opposite direction by the time the cigarillo box arrived back in Florian's hand.

'Witchcraft!' he was yelling. 'Witchcraft! Black magic!'

The words rebounded around the empty street then died out. Then away in the distance, the call went up again, but this time several angry voices mingled together. As more voices added themselves, the clamour seemed to grow louder and closer.

'Witchcraft!'

_What have I done?_ He looked around him for a moment, wondering if the Ministry would swoop down to mop up the mess he had caused. There would be consequences for him at work. However, for the time being there was only silence. The next moment came a roar of voices moving in his direction. He set off running. Home was the only place to go.

Moving faster than he had done in years, he was soon back in his own neighbourhood. The streets were reassuringly quiet, although admittedly they were never busy. In any case, the chants of 'witchcraft' were out of earshot. He didn't yet have a plan, other than to seek shelter in his house. Which wasn't a very good plan, as there were plenty of people about town who, if asked, could very easily point the way to the Whittaker house.

He turned the corner onto the lane that led to his house. The neighbours' houses were silent and inscrutable in the warm afternoon. He was still alone when the upper floors of his house came into sight. But as he turned the last corner before home, he caught sight of a figure standing in the street outside his house. It was the young woman he had seen earlier, possibly the only witness to the incident. _Why is she standing outside my house?_

'Can I help you?' he said, out of breath.

The woman smiled at him, her long blonde hair tousled slightly by a breeze that had just blown up.

She gestured at Florian's house. A large red 'X' had been daubed on the front of it.

'What's this about …' he began, his heart pounding in his chest.

'Just witchcraft,' she said serenely. Florian's heart sank. A wand suddenly visible in her hand, the woman took a step towards him. Then the front door of his house opened. Both Florian and the woman turned. The next moment the woman dropped to the ground, floored by a stunning spell, and another unknown young woman, this one with red hair, stood on Florian's front door step, her mouth coiled into a scowl of concentration.

'Get in here quick!' she said in a loud hiss.

Florian glanced down at the woman sprawled on her back in the street.

'Forget about her,' said the red-haired girl. Florian nodded and ran up his garden path and into the house.

His wife and two children were waiting for him in the living room, along with a rather grim-looking man in a brown suit. _Is he from the Ministry?_ He'd never seen him before. The red-haired girl who had stunned the witch was standing next to him. She looked vaguely familiar, presumably from the Ministry corridors.

The man in the brown suit stepped forward, a grave expression on his face. The pursed lips seemed ready to chastise.

'I've made a terrible mistake!' Florian blurted out.

'It's alright dear,' said Dora. 'The Ministry is here to help us.'

'My colleague Argenta here is from the Ministry,' said the man. 'I'm external.'

Since the man seemed in charge, it was possibly a good sign that he wasn't actually from the Ministry.

'But you're a wizard?'

The man in the brown suit hesitated for a moment and seemed to check his pocket.

'I am,' he replied, with bleak certainty.

'Can we know your name?' asked Dora.

'Isaac Edwards,' came the reply.

'Well, Mr Edwards, the thing is that I did magic in front of a muggle,' Florian began.

'You needn't worry about that,' Isaac Edwards replied. 'It will have been a set-up, I'm sure.'

'What do you mean?'

'As concisely as you can, tell me what happened.'

Florian recounted the theft of the cigarillo box, his impetuous use of magic in front of a muggle, the immediate gathering of a mob, and the mysterious woman who had just been stunned outside his house. Isaac Edwards gave a series of short, curt nods in response to the account.

'The theft of the object from your pocket was done deliberately to get a reaction out of you. The woman lying in the street outside your house is a rogue witch working in collaboration with muggle witchfinders. Most probably a mild imperius curse helped you to overreact to the theft.'

'Sorry to interrupt,' said the witch called Argenta, 'but we don't really have much time on our hands.'

'What do you mean?' asked Florian.

'The mob will be here very soon.' It was almost nonchalant, the way she said it.

'How are we supposed to deal with a mob?' said Dora with alarm.

'There's not many of us, but we'll be ok, said Isaac Edwards.

'And you have one more now,' said a new voice. 'For what it's worth.'

Florian wheeled around. Hermione Granger was also standing in his living room. 'They're here, by the way' she added. 'Magical detection spells are already in place. Somebody tried to curse me as I arrived.'

'So you made it then!' Argenta remarked, apparently not surprised to see her. 'Did Demelza tell you?'

'She did,' Hermione replied.

'Goodness me, Hermione Granger!' Dora Whittaker exclaimed. 'What an honour to meet you!'

'Um … er … thanks,' Hermione murmured. She was no longer used to that reaction.

Argenta went to the window and raised a corner of the net curtain.

'Poppy Bailey's back on her feet,' she remarked. 'She's just over the road, under the oak tree. I can't see Skelton and Chloe Goodwin, but they must be in position nearby.'

Florian Whittaker approached the window and Argenta pointed to the young woman who had been waiting for him in front of the house. She was once again standing calmly on the grass verge on the other side of the lane as if she had never been stunned.

'They'll be sealing the house with enchantments,' said Argenta. 'In a few minutes they'll be here.'

'The mob?' asked Florian. Argenta nodded.

'Now is the time to leave, if you want to,' said Isaac, walking over to the window himself. 'We can blast a hole in their enchantments and get you out.'

Florian Whittaker shrugged and looked at his wife.

'Is there any chance this is all a misunderstanding?' he asked the gathered wizards.

'Virtually none,' said Argenta.

'You can wait five minutes for them to arrive, but by then it's likely there'll be no leaving,' replied Isaac Edwards.

Dora Whittaker shook her head and said in a despairing voice:

'Are they really going to burn our house down?'

'It may not be as bad as that,' replied Isaac. They may just smash the windows and daub the walls with anti-witchcraft slogans.'

'Let the children leave,' she said. 'We'll stay and fight.'

'No Mum! Come with us!' said Eldra, their daughter.

'The idea isn't to fight them,' said Isaac. 'The idea is to escape them.'

'We can rebuild any damage they do,' said Florian Whittaker. 'Let's not waste any more time.'

'Right,' said Isaac, 'Hermione, would you mind trying to keep whoever gathers outside at bay? Argenta and I will try and get around the sealing spells, as we have more experience of that kind of magic. You only need to keep them busy for about three minutes or so. That should get us enough time to have a way-out in place. The portal out of here will pass through the cellar door off the back of the hall. You'll need to pass through it at a 45o angle.'

Hermione nodded. _So you do do magic after all_.

They were interrupted by the sound of smashing glass.

'Did someone just throw a brick through our window?!' shouted Florian.

'No, Dad,' called out Eustace, the Whittakers' son. 'It was a curse, I think'.

'We should get started now,' said Isaac to Argenta. Argenta turned to Hermione.

'Are you sure you can handle them? There could be quite a lot of them.'

Hermione looked grimly towards the street.

'I'll be ok,' she said.

'I could help too,' came a new voice. They wheeled round. Harry Potter was standing in the hallway. He had apparently just walked in through the front door.

'What are you doing here?' Argenta exclaimed.

'How did you know there was an operation going on here?' Isaac added.

Hermione just stood in silence, staring at him. The entire Whittaker family was gawping at him too.

'I ran into Demelza,' he replied quickly.

'What a good hire she was,' Argenta remarked, smirking first at Isaac then at Hermione.

'By the way,' Harry continued, 'I just saw a mob of about thirty people who'll be here in about two minutes. And they don't look like they're too keen on wizards.'

'At least you managed to get in,' said Isaac. 'That means the house isn't sealed.'

'I had to break a sealing charm on the front door to get in,' said Harry. 'Quite a strong one.'

'Well, do you mind going back out there and helping Hermione to hold them off?' said Isaac.

'After all,' Argenta added with a smirk, 'the two of you probably work well as a team.'

Neither Hermione nor Harry replied.

Isaac and Argenta ushered the Whittaker family out through the dining room. As Harry and Hermione went back to the front door, they could already hear Argenta and Isaac start up an incantation. Harry turned to Hermione.

'I'll go out first. Cover me. That should draw the others out into the open.'

'Ok,' she replied. 'But how come you decided to …?'

A grin stole across his lips.

'For a bit of practice. And for old time's sake.'

He pushed open the front door, firing a barrage of curses at the young woman standing under the tree. A flurry of counter-curses greeted him in reply. He ducked behind a bush into the Whittakers' front garden, narrowly avoiding fresh curses fired down from above. The front door flew open again and he felt the air behind him scorched as Hermione fired in the direction of the other two wizards. He heard a scream and a smart-looking witch came crashing down in the road in front of him. The witch falling off the roof distracted Poppy Bailey just long enough for Harry to leap over the Whittakers' garden fence and dispatch her with a stunning spell.

'Harry! Left now!' cried Hermione behind him. Without thinking he followed her instruction, throwing himself to his left. A moment later, a curse blasted a small hole in the tarmac where he had been standing. He rolled over and turned so that he had a good view of the sky. He looked up and saw the handsome figure of Charlie Skelton standing on the Whittakers' roof, wand in hand. Suddenly he seemed to be dancing, as he dodged a series of curses fired by Hermione from the garden. Harry leapt to his feet and sent his own volley of curses in the direction of the roof, but Skelton evaded them all.

'Isaac's portal!' Hermione cried, gesturing to Harry to get back inside the house. He ran as quickly as he could, especially as one of the witches was back on her feet and firing curse after curse in his direction, shattering the windows of the Whittakers' sitting room and blasting a hole in the front door. Hermione flung open the smouldering door and pulled Harry inside. They fell in a heap on the mosaic floor of the Whittaker's entrance hall. Another curse smashed through the door and exploded into the wall above their heads, so they crawled the length of the hall until they reached the door to the cellar. As they did so, they could hear the roar of a crowd approaching. Now a brick came crashing through a window, landing a few feet from them. Harry reached up and opened the cellar door. Then he hauled Hermione to her feet and they jumped through the open doorway hand in hand, remembering to angle their jump accordingly.

They disapparated as they passed through the doorway, emerging into the light on top of a church tower. Isaac, Argenta and the Whittaker family were already there, looking out over the streets around the church.

'Nice work,' remarked Argenta. Her normally pale face was flushed.

'Where are we?' asked Harry, steadying his footing. He was a little too close to the tower's low balustrade.

'Still in Totlingham,' said Isaac. 'The Whittakers' house is just over there.' He pointed down from the tower.

It was easy to make out which road the Whittakers' house was situated on. The narrow road was filled with a large crowd, some with scarves tied around their mouths, chanting and banging an assortment of loud objects. Some were throwing stones at the house, while others were loose in the garden, and presumably inside the house as well.

'I wonder if the mob saw any of that wand battle,' remarked Argenta. 'They might not take it very well if they find out they're being helped by actual wizards.'

As they watched, one protester threw a tin of red paint over the house's façade. The Whittaker family itself looked on in horror.

Florian Whittaker turned to Isaac.

'Why? Who really hates wizards this much?'

'These people,' said Isaac grimly, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a tract, which he handed to Florian.

'It was stuck to a lamppost in town.'

''_Respected local man practises witchcraft'_' he read in a dull voice. ''_Whittaker family implicated in ritual murder of local woman'. _What murder?'

'One of Voldemort's victims,' said Hermione. 'The idea is to frame innocent wizards for murders carried out by the Death Eaters.'

'Where are we supposed to go now?' said Eustace Whittaker, as he peered over the edge at the antics of the mob.

'First we get out of here,' said Isaac. 'You'll probably want to go to the Ministry. Someone will help you find temporary accommodation. And put you in contact with a muggle lawyer.'

Suddenly some members of the crowd started shouting and gesticulating towards the top of the church tower.

'I think it's time we get to a genuinely safe distance,' said Isaac.

* * *

They left the Whittaker family at Muggle Relations. Demelza was waiting to take them inside. Hermione could see her give her a strange look. _Because Harry's standing next to me._ Isaac hadn't entered the Ministry. _I suppose he could if he wanted._

'I'd better go and make a report,' said Argenta dolefully, following the Whittakers into the office.

The corridor was empty apart from her and Harry.

'I have to be going too,' he said, already half a step down the corridor.

'Harry, why so fast?' she called out in a low voice, taking a step after him. He stopped and looked back at her. She couldn't read his expression.

'I'm sticking to our pact. Demelza gave us a funny look when she saw us together just now.'

'Well what did you expect?' Hermione replied.

Her legs felt weak, so she reached out her hand to the wall to steady herself.

'Thanks for today,' she added.

'Don't mention it.'

She glanced at the closed door beside them, as if it was about to open. But no sound or movement came from it.

'I won't try to speak to you again when you're sleeping.'

He nodded numbly.

'It's probably for the best.'

No reply came to mind.

'People will be wondering where I am,' he added.

_Say their names if you like._

She started to reach out her hand then withdrew it. He saw her gesture but said nothing.

'Bye Harry.'

'Bye.'

He was starting to turn away.

'Harry you were right,' she said.

He turned back, a quizzical look on his face.

'Right about what?'

'It can't go on like this. It's not enough after all.'

She wasn't sure she had intended to say the words out loud.

He paused for a moment.

'No, it isn't,' he replied. Then he disappeared round the corner.

When she reached the level her office was on she walked straight past it and out of her department. More than one glance was directed towards her as she crossed the atrium, heading for the flues. She realised she was walking very fast, and rather obviously walking out of the Ministry. _Goodness only knows what sort of look I've got on my face_.

The air in the alleyway was stale and polluted, but at least she was out in the open. She leaned for a moment against the brick wall, listening to the whirr of an air conditioning unit mounted on the wall across from her. She looked down the alleyway: people were passing quickly in the street beyond it, scarcely aware that the alleyway existed. Her heart suddenly beat quicker: _why not here_? She slid down the wall until she was sitting on the ground, her back propped against the wall. Then she began the incantations.

Once inside the Circle, the only noticeable change in the scene before her was the absence of the hum of traffic at the end of the alleyway. Instead everything was enveloped in a kind of numb silence. _What a state I must look_. She waited patiently for the transaction to be made. Her left arm was stiff and sore, so this time she planned to offer up her other arm. She looked up when she heard footsteps echoing down the alleyway. The light seemed to have faded, as if night was suddenly falling over the alleyway.

A pale, pretty blonde girl emerged from the shadows.

'Oh dear, what would your Mum and Dad say if they could see you now?'

'I might ask you the same thing,' Hermione replied from where she sat.

'I know who you are, by the way,' she added.

'It doesn't matter who I am,' the girl replied.

'People are worried about you,' Hermione continued.

'I know they are.'

'Doesn't that bother you?'

'Of course it bothers me. That's the whole point.'

'It makes you strong in the Circle, does it?'

'I don't have to tell you about things like that.'

Hermione smiled.

'No, Iona, you don't.'

Iona Deasy made no response to her name.

'Do you want to do this or not?'

'I do,' Hermione replied, holding up her arm.

The girl promptly took out a needle. Hermione closed her eyes. When she opened them, the operation was over. Iona stood silently a few feet away from her, her eyes fixed on her.

'Come and see what you paid for,' she said. She opened her hand and held it out to Hermione, even smiling as she did so. Hermione stood up and took hold of the outstretched hand. The alleyway vanished in an instant.

The first thing Hermione saw was the jagged outline of a ruined stone wall against an overcast sky.

'Is this a castle?' she said.

'What's left of it,' replied Iona drily. 'This way,' she added, tugging on Hermione's arm and pulling her down the grassy slope that ran down from the castle wall into what looked like the beginnings of woodland. Hermione put up no resistance. At the bottom of the hill lay a dell dotted with scraggly clusters of trees, bereft of all their leaves. Without a word, Iona led Hermione into a copse that marked the boundary between open ground and woods.

A sad skeletal canopy of bare branches drooped down over them. The heavy grey sky was visible through the gaps between the branches and the air was moist and clammy. Although the trees were bare, a thick layer of damp brown leaves lay beneath their feet. Hermione cast about for some remnant of magic in that place, but could sense none.

'What are we doing here?' she exclaimed after a few moments.

'Sshh! Wait,' replied Iona. They stood in silence in the cold, damp copse until they heard soft footfalls behind them as someone trudged slowly across the leaves. Hermione began to turn around but Iona restrained her with a firm grasp of the arm.

'Just watch,' she said in a low voice.

A figure walked right past them and stopped in the middle of the clearing, under the bare trees. The figure was that of a man of perhaps thirty. He was tall and rather overweight and was carrying a large plastic carrier bag. He glanced around him, revealing a reddish, puffy face and glassy grey eyes, but gave no sign of seeing the girls. Then he put down the carrier bag and began rummaging in the inside of his overcoat. After a few moments he pulled out a wand, examined it in his hands for a few moments, then crouched down, clearing a space with his hands in the dead leaves. He muttered an inaudible incantation and a small hole opened up in the earth, into which he carefully placed the wand. Then, with another incantation, the hole closed up around the wand. He stood up and kicked some leaves over the place where the hole had been. Then he crouched down again, this time over the carrier bag, from which he pulled out a large black robe. He examined the robe, running his hand over a badge sewn onto it, a badge that Hermione instantly recognised as the Hogwarts crest. Then he stood up straight and threw the robe so that it caught on a bare branch and hung there. The wizard made a vague sort of bow in the direction of the robe, then turned and walked quickly out of the copse.

At first neither of them spoke. It was Iona who broke the silence.

'Did you enjoy it?' she asked.

'Yes, it was very entertaining,' replied Hermione drily.

'Did you get it?' said Iona.

'It was the moment a wizard abandoned his wand and Hogwarts cloak,' replied Hermione. 'By abandoning magic, the barrier between the magical and the non-magical weakened just a little bit more.'

'Very good,' said Iona. She walked up to the spot where the wand had been buried, and walked around it. Then she turned and looked up at the robe hanging from the tree. After a few moments a cold gust of wind passed through the copse, wrenching the robe from the branch and casting it down on the dead leaves below, so that it lay spreadeagled at Iona's feet. She leaned down and touched it herself, then let go of it and stood up.

'It's funny, isn't it?' she said to Hermione, turning and looking at her with a look of cool curiosity. 'Standing here, like you said, at the barrier between the magical and the non-magical. I used to stand on the other side.'

Hermione looked at Iona. She was trembling slightly, partly from the cold, but most from the sense of exhilaration at being in that place. She was strikingly pretty, only she was excessively pale and almost gaunt, and her eyes shone with a strange light. _Surely she should be doing something other than prowling about on the borders between the magical and the non-magical_.

'Is that how she seduced you?' said Hermione. 'With the promise of magic?'

The girl looked silently at her, but her gaze seemed to be directed inwards.

'Well, she delivered,' she said at last in a low voice. 'What has she promised you?'

The question took Hermione by surprise.

'I don't know exactly,' she replied. 'A kind of suffocation, I suppose.'

'And she can deliver that as well,' came the reply. Then the scene was gone and Hermione was back in the alleyway. Her head spun faintly, but the ill effects didn't seem as bad as before. _Am I becoming immune to it?_ She rested her head against the brick wall. There was almost something relaxing about sitting there. In any case, there didn't seem to be anywhere else she could go.


	37. The vigilance of Hermione Granger - Ch15

15\. The warm-up

It was not long after dawn and the grass was still wet with dew. The sun was low in the sky and the air still cool. Hermione stood in a field behind her house, concentrated on a spot in front of her. The silence of the morning was violently interrupted as she held up a revolver and fired a series of shots at a row of trees that ran along the edge of the field. Then she reloaded the gun and started again. So far a handful of shots had hit the target she had set herself, a particularly old and broad oak tree.

After a while she heard the sound of someone trudging through the wet grass. She didn't turn around, and continued to shoot at the old oak tree. Once within earshot the person shouted out in a gruff voice:

'What the hell do you think you're doing?'

She lowered the gun and turned around.

'Practising,' she said, looking at Ron with a defiant expression.

'Where did you get one of those?' he said, looking at the gun in her hand.

'They're not hard to come by.'

'And why have you got one?'

'Self-defence,' came the reply.

'What makes you think that thing's going to help you? A tube that shoots little pieces of metal out of the end?'

'I know how a gun works, Ron. But for someone who spends so much time playing with imaginary guns, you don't seem to think much of them.'

'Very funny. Anyway, guns have no subtlety to them. A wand's much better.'

'This is _in addition_ to magic, Ron,' she replied, looking at the gun in her hand. 'Since witchfinders can't use magic, they're just as likely to use regular weapons such as guns. I intend to be fully prepared, that's all.'

'For what?'

She turned back and looked at the tree she was using for target practice.

'For no reason,' she replied curtly, looking down the barrel of the gun. 'Just more paranoia on my part. There's nothing going on. It's not as if Florian Whittaker and his family were chased out of their home by a mob.'

Ron scowled.

'You know the Ministry's investigating that.'

'Muggle Relations is investigating. Not the Auror Office.'

'No traces of magic were found at the scene, so I heard.'

'That's because the wizards involved cleaned up after they'd finished. Cleaned up their handiwork at least, not the damage done by the mob.'

'I know that's what Isaac Edwards says.'

'And he's making it up, is he?'

It would be awkward to explain why she had been there. Let alone Harry.

'The report's not finished yet.'

'But it's hardly the first time something like this has happened,' Ron remarked.

'No, it isn't. But there'll be more and more.'

Ron paused, pursing his lips and looking grimly at the gun in her hand.

'The neighbours are going to think you're some sort of...'

She looked round at him with a withering stare.

'Some sort of lunatic, Ron?'

He shook his head.

'It's been two years, Hermione. The Ministry's still there. Hogwarts is still there, not to mention Diagon Alley and every other wizard place in the country. And no one has come crashing in here to kidnap you either. In fact, barely anyone even knows where we live. You won't let me give out our address. Not even the village.'

'As long as I live here, Ron, that's how I intend to keep it.'

She turned away from him and began loading bullets into her gun. Then she raised her arm and once again started firing at the oak tree. This time all six bullets hit their target.

'Once you've finished vandalising the countryside,' said Ron, glaring at her, 'perhaps you'll come in and have some breakfast. I was hoping to sleep late, but there's no chance of getting back to sleep now.'

'Sleep, eat, whatever. Do it while you can,' she called out as he began to walk away.

'I'm not even going to bother to say that you're mental, Hermione. It's gone way beyond that,' Ron called out from across the field.

'Why don't you have me committed then?' shouted Hermione over her shoulder.

'I don't know what that means!' Ron shouted back.

'Well look it up then, you're so much the expert on muggles these days!'

He disappeared over the style at the top of the field. She reloaded and fired again. One bullet out of six missed its target.

Half an hour later Hermione stepped into the kitchen. Ron was drinking a cup of coffee and reading _The Daily Prophet_.

'I've repaired the tree,' said Hermione in a quiet voice. Ron looked up at her with a vacant expression.

'Ron, I'm a wanted person,' she continued.

'That's what you've been saying for the past two years,' he replied in a tone of tranquil resignation.

She propped herself up against the kitchen dresser.

'I wonder what you'd say if someone had forced you to dig up graves at wand point?'

'I thought you were over that.'

'I am over it. But I won't forget the intent behind it. The hatred, directed at us.'

Ron turned away. He seemed to be looking towards the kitchen window.

'Is there someone outside?' Hermione asked.

He turned back to her. His scowl had deepened.

'It's that Mrs Shepherd from down the road.'

'She's not coming here?'

'She just passed the gate.'

'Oh good.'

'But actually, why shouldn't she come here? We're her neighbours. Though maybe she heard the shooting. That sort of thing would normally make people worried.'

Hermione took the revolver out of her pocket and started examining it.

'Out in the country people are shooting all the time,' she remarked in a distracted voice.

'Just how many guns have you got?' said Ron. She looked up in his direction.

'I have three,' she said, now looking straight at him. 'A revolver and two semi-automatic pistols.'

'A revolver and two semi-automatic pistols,' he repeated sardonically.

'It's no good knowing how to use just one type of weapon,' Hermione retorted. 'It's like knowing just one spell.'

'I suppose that makes sense,' replied Ron, reaching into his pocket and drawing out his wand. '_Accio_ guns!' he shouted, flourishing the wand over the kitchen table. Hermione stood motionless and passive as the gun lifted itself out of her hand and prostrated itself on the kitchen table. A few moments later, a further pair of guns came floating in through the open kitchen door and presented themselves on the table next to the first.

'What a lovely collection,' remarked Ron drily.

'What do you want with them?' asked Hermione coolly, not moving from her spot by the dresser.

Ron gave no answer. Instead he conjured up a little black bag. Then, with his next trick, he made the guns stuff themselves into the bag. Once full, the bag disappeared with a slight pop.

'Give me those back,' said Hermione quietly.

'No,' said Ron.

'Why not, are they more dangerous than a wand?' asked Hermione, her wand suddenly in her hand and pointed at Ron. 'Since I'm mad, you'd better take this off me as well, in case I perform some unforgivable curse on you.'

She brandished the wand in Ron's direction, as if she meant to hand it over to him. He looked at her quizzically, not sure if she was serious.

'Take it,' she repeated. 'Take it away and have me locked up somewhere safe.'

Ron looked grimly at the outstretched wand and said nothing. Hermione sighed loudly and lowered her wand.

'Listen Ron,' she said, 'either I am completely wrong about the threat we're facing, in which case I am completely paranoid and insane, or I'm right and we're screwed anyway.'

Ron continued in silence. Apparently deep in thought, he too was chewing on his lip.

'It's Saturday morning,' he said in a low voice. 'Can we take a break from this, at least for this weekend?'

Hermione sighed deeply again, in apparent resignation.

Nothing more was said about the Witchfinder or the Seven-Pointed Circle for the rest of Saturday. Ron and Hermione had lunch in the isolated country pub where Ron often drank with Harry, then walked back to the house, following a winding route through a small wood and across open fields. The weather was warm, excessively warm for late October. Shortly after returning home, Ron announced that he wanted to call on Ginny and Harry. Hermione began to express her reluctance, but Ron made no attempt to insist that she accompany him, so he left her watching television alone in the house. In any case, he completed his errand in less than half an hour, in time for them to begin preparing dinner. Not once in the course of the afternoon or the evening did Hermione enter her office. She tried to focus her mind on seeing only what was immediately in front of her: the comfortable and spacious house, the food spread out on the kitchen table, the view of green fields and woodland, the muted shades of the bedroom. When at last she lay in bed and her eyes grew heavy, she entertained a vague hope that the night might pass in the same vein.

* * *

She had not long been asleep when she found herself on the corridors of Hogwarts, answering a summons to the Headmaster's Office. She was already in the vestibule when it occurred to her that she had never actually been inside. When the door swung open, the office looked as she supposed it must have done: a great high room, its walls lined with ancient books, portraits of headmasters past and all manner of arcane magical devices, but sitting in the Headmaster's Chair was Lillian Herrick, dressed soberly in robes like those Professor McGonagall wore.

'Hermione, you're not looking too well,' she said with what sounded remarkably like concern, and inviting her to take a seat.

Hermione ascended to the headmaster's desk and sat down in silence.

'I suppose it's all the blood loss,' Lillian continued.

Hermione looked around her.

'I'd call this sacrilege, but I suppose that's one of your specialities,' she answered at last.

Lillian Herrick smiled.

'You know how important education is to me. And I would have loved to have been a teacher here.'

'What on earth would you have taught?' asked Hermione, almost amused at the prospect.

'Transfiguration?' suggested Lillian blithely. 'Potions? Or even divination?'

Hermione had to admit that Lillian could probably give a rather entertaining class in any of those subjects. She said nothing, but the vaguest of smiles escaped her lips. The smile did not go unnoticed.

'To tell you the truth, most of all I'd have loved to teach you, Hermione. You and Harry. I could have made something very interesting out of you.'

'Oh I think we would have seen through you.'

'Yes, I suppose you would have.'

They looked at each other for a moment across the Headmaster's desk. It was Lillian who interrupted the silence.

'You'll be pleased to know that I won't be asking for any more blood.'

'Is that right?' said Hermione. 'Vampirism not doing it for you anymore?'

Lillian tutted.

'Once you get past the initial symbolism, you're just left staring at a flask of red liquid,' she remarked nonchalantly. 'And you've already been the recipient of enough pain. If you want to see any more you're going to have to be the one to inflict it.'

Hermione felt her heart beating faster.

'What do you mean?' she asked, in a voice as calm as she could muster.

'Victimhood is so seductive,' Lillian replied. 'It's insidious. Very bad for the spirit.'

Her gaze was now fixed on Hermione.

'So the best remedy is an act of cruelty towards someone close to you: there's nothing so good for focusing the mind. Or to put it another way: your guilt is worth more than your blood.'

Hermione tried to smile but couldn't get her mouth into the right shape.

'Maybe I don't want to see any more of your gates,' she replied calmly. Lillian smiled.

'I see: ignore poor Lillian and she'll go away. She's nothing more than an attention-seeker anyway.'

'Something like that.'

'You have enough information to stop me now, is that it?'

Hermione said nothing.

'You know, Hermione,' Lillian continued, 'So far I've shown amazing powers of self-restraint.'

'I suppose that's a threat.'

'I just want you to understand that thinking that you can call my bluff by ignoring me is an _illusion_.' The friendly tone was gone, replaced by cold malice. 'Just try me: what would you like to see? Shall I have poor Ron put one of those guns of yours in his mouth and shoot?'

She allowed the threat to linger in the silence between them. Hermione looked at her in silent horror.

'I thought you said you don't put guns in people's hands.'

'I don't want to do it of course.' Her tone was friendly again. 'But you understand that it wouldn't be difficult. And anyway, I would only really be continuing your work.'

_This is pointless anyway_. _I can't turn away_.

'Tell me something,' she said at last, suddenly thinking of something worth trying on Lillian. 'Gondulph Belhaine says he's been tipped off that the Witchfinder is going to expose us. Was that you who tipped him off?'

The strange green eyes were upon her. Their scrutiny was hard to bear, but Hermione had the feeling that the eyes were somehow probing her for the truth, no longer sparkling with mischief but dry, cold and focused, like the eyes of a hunter. _Maybe she isn't Belhaine's source?_

Suddenly Lillian's eyes regained their usual dazzling glaze. 'If you want to know more,' she replied. 'You know what to do.'

Hermione sat back in her chair and glanced up at the portraits on the wall. Among them was a portrait of Dumbledore, apparently lost in sleep. He couldn't help her. And even if he was still alive, she suspected she was already beyond his help.

'You say you want me to feel guilty,' she replied at last. 'What makes you think I don't already feel guilty?'

'You've just dipped your toes in it so far,' said Lillian. 'If you want to really make the Circle work for you, as it does for me, then you have to be in over your head. Happy Halloween.'

The walls of the Headmaster's Office slowly began to fade, until only Lillian's triumphant eyes were visible. Then she disappeared altogether and Hermione could remember nothing more.

* * *

Sunday passed slowly and quietly. Ron and Hermione ate breakfast together then walked in the fields around Chase End. The weather was even warmer and sunnier than the previous day, growing hotter as the morning went on. By noon the sky had been emptied of its last scattered clouds. In search of shelter from the sun they changed course, heading into the larger village that provided the nearest shops and services to Chase End. While Chase End was little more than a scattering of houses and high hedges along a winding country lane, its neighbour boasted a high street of tall Victorian and Georgian buildings, a wide village green and a rather eccentrically built Baroque church. They walked along the high street, past smart women browsing in specialist shops or engrossed in conversations on coffee shop terraces, and jovial groups of men outside pubs, talking loudly over their pints. Hermione felt exposed, as if the sun was burning down to her very bones. She looked into a shop window to try and tranquilise herself. The window was filled with a display of ghoulish masks, skulls and little witches on broomsticks. The display was bathed in an orange light emitted by a ring of glowing jack o'lanterns. She had forgotten it was Halloween. The evening might bring trick-or-treaters to their doorstep. She stepped away from the window display, shivering despite the heat, and walked quickly down the street to catch up with Ron. A mother passed her, flanked by two small children, both dressed in Halloween costumes. Hermione shot them a searching glance. _A real witch just walked past you. What do you think of that? Would you be frightened if you knew?_

She followed Ron into a convenience store, the only chain store on the High Street. As he picked out groceries she lingered between two narrow aisles, pretending to look at the items on the shelves. She smiled and politely answered enquiries after her health when they met a neighbour from Chase End. Ron had at some point put into circulation the story that she was suffering from chronic illness. She had never sought to deny it. By the time they began the two-mile walk back to Chase End, light clouds were tempering the sunlight and making the heat gentler. She felt a kind of drowsiness wash over her, which brought with it a feeling that perhaps she could let everything go after all, that it would be a pleasant thing to experience the end of her world in such surroundings. They arrived home after four o'clock, and when Ron came in with a pot of tea he found her asleep on the sofa.

After taking tea with Ron, she went upstairs for a shower. While she was in the shower, she heard Ginny's voice in the hall downstairs. It was odd that Ron hadn't said anything, but maybe it was an impromptu visit. But as she entered the living room, she found to her shock that it was full: in addition to Ron and Ginny, sitting before her were Neville Longbottom, Luna Lovegood, Mr and Mrs Weasley, George, Percy, Bill and Fleur. Even Harry was there, sitting quietly in a corner. She backed up against the wall and looked coolly out at them.


	38. The vigilance of Hermione Granger - Ch16

16\. The feature presentation

'Is this what I think it is?' she said to Ron in a clipped, almost amused tone.

'I think it's necessary, don't you?' said Ron gravely.

A smile slipped out onto her face. She could feel that it was an unpleasant one. She stepped away from the wall and into the open space in front of the living room area proper.

'I suppose you've been softening me up over the weekend, ready for the emotional onslaught this evening?'

She looked around the room. _These people are supposed to be my friends._ She found she couldn't make eye contact with them. They seemed to look through her anyway. But Harry was there, sitting among them, _pretending to be one of them_. She reached for his gaze just for an instant, to grasp it and hold on for dear life. It was true and clear, she was sure of it. Or almost.

'You give me too much credit,' said Ron. 'It wasn't that organised.'

'Well, that's something I suppose. But tell me,' she said, fixing him with her gaze, 'why is it that I'm to be exposed in front of so many people this evening?'

'It's not hard to see that there's something seriously wrong, Hermione' began Neville, suddenly falling silent as Luna elbowed him in the arm.

'Everyone is here because it hurts them to see you suffering like this,' said Ginny.

Hermione looked at her quickly. _She's sincere_. She did a quick tour of the faces in the room. _All sincere. All genuinely concerned_. She looked away as quickly as she had looked in. _I can't bear it_. _But I'll have to._

'I care a lot about everyone in this room,' she began slowly. 'I'm truly sorry for causing you pain. If it's come to this, things must be bad. I just want to say one thing: it was never my intention to become a bad person, or to torment those closest to me.'

'Hermione dear, no one thinks you're a bad person,' said Mrs Weasley warmly.

'I am,' she continued. 'I am a bad person. I've made myself immune to your suffering.'

'But we're not immune to yours,' said Ginny. 'And we want to help you. We can all see that you're harming yourself worrying about this supposed threat. You're letting it consume you.'

'You're right,' said Hermione, her voice choked and low. 'It is selfish of me to behave this way. But I feel like I have an almost endless capacity to endure this. And it's as if I have to, because in order to face her, I need to have nothing to lose.'

'I'm sorry, Hermione,' said Bill Weasley in a pleasant tone. 'I don't know too much about this threat you've talked about. Why do you need to have nothing left to lose?'

Hermione smiled weakly. The anger had drained away, leaving only tiredness.

'This is a nice house. You and Fleur have a lovely house too. All of us live comfortable lives in nice homes, enjoying the victory that was won for us … when was it? Six years ago now I think? And that's as it should be. We've nothing really to worry about. Which makes us complacent. And our complacency makes us an attractive target. That's why we have so much to lose.'

'I've heard this before,' said Percy. 'What's changed now?'

'What's changed is that she's ready to act.'

'By she you mean this Lillian Herrick,' Percy added.

_Who else could it be?_ The anger rekindled itself in an instant. She forced herself to exhale, to calm down. _Of course it isn't obvious to them._

'Yes, Lillian Herrick,' she said slowly, all her energy ebbing away again.

'Wasn't she always ready?'

She felt herself clenching her fists. But now she was back in control.

'I don't think so. Now she has a group of followers. She knows a lot about us. And she has the power to follow through on her threats.'

'So she claims,' Ron muttered.

'She wants to be underestimated,' Hermione replied, scowling at Ron. 'You're practically doing half her work for her.'

'But how do we fight an enemy that's effectively invisible and seems to be perpetually biding its time?' put in Percy.

Hermione sighed. _But that's a pertinent question, at least._

'I don't know yet,' she said after a heavy pause.

'What real proof do you have that she's a threat?' Percy asked.

His tone annoyed her, really annoyed her.

'The kind of evidence that would only seem convincing if you already believe that there is a threat,' she replied quickly, folding her arms.

'Well, this isn't getting very far,' said Percy.

'I didn't summon you all here to give you a presentation about Lillian Herrick,' Hermione replied evenly.

'What's the worst that can happen, though, really?' asked Luna, suddenly piping up. 'If the world knows the truth about wizards, I suppose some people will fear us and attack us, but most people won't mind that they live next door to wizards. Maybe we'll have to go into hiding for a while, and places like Hogwarts and Diagon Alley would never be the same again, but we'll keep going.'

'How can you be so relaxed about such a thing?' said Ginny. 'If what Hermione says is going to happen actually happened, don't you think it would be awful?'

'You're both half-right, said Hermione. Again, this was somehow more promising. 'There probably are lots of people who would have nothing against us. Or even think we're cool or something. But there are enough people who won't. Enough to make the secrecy that surrounds us worth protecting.'

She took a deep breath. _I suppose I'd better make my final pitch_.

'The people who want to expose us are going to say that wizards are responsible for all sorts of crimes, crimes committed by Voldemort and all the other dark wizards of the last fifty years, or a hundred years, or a thousand years for that matter. They won't make a distinction between dark wizards and good wizards. Witchcraft is witchcraft, they'll say. And plenty of people will believe them. What would you do if you found out that there's a secret society living right under your nose, one with mysterious magical powers? How will you explain the difference between a good curse and an evil curse? And even if you can, do you think they'll listen?'

'Hermione,' said Ron, trying to adopt a reasonable tone. 'If all that did happen, you're probably right: it would turn out that way. It would be a right old mess, and pretty dangerous too. But the point is: how likely is it to happen? If you spend half the time speaking to Isaac Edwards and the other half speaking to this Lillian Herrick, you're bound to think it's likely.'

Hermione shot him a withering look.

'Is that the extent of your argument?'

'No,' he replied. 'You know the Ministry has a file on the Seven-Pointed Circle and categorised it as a kind of hypnotism and a low threat?'

'Yes, I've read that file.'

'And the Ministry's wrong?'

'Yes. I know it's wrong because I can use the Circle myself.'

'Did you know that Isaac Edwards raised the threat of witchfinders harassing wizards and trying to enter magical places before, about ten years ago? And that the evidence he presented saved his contract with the Ministry from getting cancelled?'

'I knew about that too, Ron.'

'Don't you think it's a funny coincidence?'

'Do I think it's a coincidence that witchfinders would periodically start harassing wizards and trying to expose our society? What else do you think witchfinders do?'

'You know who Camelia Morley is, of course?'

Hermione's eyes widened with surprise.

'I do. She was Stephen Morley's sister. But I'm curious how you know who she is?'

Ron coughed.

'I've been doing some investigating of my own.'

'Investigating that you didn't tell me about.'

'I watched the man visit her grave. He seemed to be still in mourning after all these years.'

'I'm sure he is,' said Hermione. 'I can't imagine what it's like to lose a sister or brother. But how much do you know about Camelia Morley? Did you know that she was a witch?'

'No, I didn't get that far.'

'Yes, she was a muggle-born witch. The only one in her family. Only her family didn't like it. They wanted to cure her, or coerce her into giving up magic.'

'Don't tell me they murdered her?' Neville exclaimed.

'No, in the end she committed suicide.'

The room went silent.

'I don't know exactly what we can conclude from the story of Camelia Morley,' Hermione continued when no one else spoke. 'We don't know much of the details, and Stephen Morley is hardly likely to tell us.'

'Why don't you use the Circle on him and find out?' Ginny asked.

'That's the sort of thing Lillian Herrick would do,' Hermione replied. 'And anyway, I don't think the information would help us all that much. I think Stephen Morley disliked wizards even before he lost his sister, but losing her must have intensified his hatred.'

'You mean you think he drove her to suicide?' asked Mrs Weasley.

Hermione looked at the faces before her, particularly those of the Weasley family. She wondered whether Mr Morley had been involved in trying to cure Camelia Morley of her ability to do magic. But the subject was already too fraught.

'He has his reasons for doing what he does,' she replied. 'But with Lillian Herrick secretly helping him, that makes him a dangerous enemy.'

'But what proves she's helping him?' asked Ron. 'Apart from the fact that she says she is.'

Hermione sighed. _It always comes back to that._

'Tell us this, Hermione,' said Ginny suddenly. 'You keep telling us how amazingly subtle and dangerous this Lillian Herrick is. How do you know that she hasn't corrupted you already?'

Hermione looked around at the gathering before her. Judging by the dark expressions, furrowed brows and undercurrent of whispers, her friends no longer knew what to think. She glanced at Harry. He was staring fiercely into the distance.

'I suppose I am corrupted, in a way,' she said slowly, a kind of desperate defiance creeping into her voice. 'I have to corrupt myself to a certain extent to fight her on her level.'

'Hermione, beware,' said Mr Weasley, his tone as reasonable and amiable as ever. 'That doesn't sound good, whatever the stakes.'

Hermione looked plaintively at him.

'It isn't good. It's a bad idea, possibly the worst I've had. But there's no other way of doing this.'

A prolonged silence greeted her last statement. At last Ginny spoke. Her voice was low and uncomprehending.

'How can you expect us not to worry about you when you speak like this?'

'Worry about me by all means,' said Hermione. 'Just don't try to stop me.'

'I was afraid you were going to say that,' said Ron, suddenly coming towards her. She instinctively took a step back, her eyes flashing in fear.

'Have you decided to try and take my wand after all?' she asked defiantly.

'No,' said Mrs Weasley, 'but something has to be done about you.'

'Done about me?' Hermione's gaze shifted quickly onto Ron. 'What is the plan then?'

Ron stood up.

'There's no plan. This is just intended to show you that you can't go on like this on your own.'

Hermione looked somewhat perplexed.

'I thought I was on my own. And so far I can't say I've been given the impression that we're all about to join forces and fight Lillian Herrick together.'

Ron's face was unapologetic.

'You want us to be as united as we were when we stood against Voldemort?'

'That would help.'

'Well, we're not so disunited as you think. Everyone here has pledged to stand and fight when the time comes.'

'Good,' Hermione replied. 'But when will that time be? When the cat is out of the bag? Who are we going to fight? We might have a third of the population of Britain against us by then!'

'Doesn't even what I just said sway you?' said Ron.

'Sway me to do what?'

'To take a rest from all this! To calm down! To get some help!'

She could no longer hold back the anger rising up in her.

'I told you Ron, if you want to have me sent away to a mental hospital, feel free to. I'll go and pack now if you like.'

Ron hesitated and Hermione turned to leave.

'Wait a minute, young lady,' said Mrs Weasley, leaping to her feet. Hermione stopped in her tracks and turned slowly.

'This can't go on,' Mrs Weasley continued. 'It's about time you paid a little attention to the effect you're having on my son. I'm sorry to have to say this, but you're barely recognisable from the girl I knew in years gone by. Everyone here is worried about you, but we're also worried about poor Ron. He might as well be on his own for all the attention you give him. He doesn't complain, but it's quite clear to all of us. And I'm not going to let this fester for any longer!'

Hermione listened in silence.

'You're right,' she said at last, her voice faltering. 'Ron has suffered a lot. Guiltlessly too.'

'And what are you going to do about it?' said Mrs Weasley more gently, somewhat placated.

Hermione looked at Ron. He also seemed somewhat placated. _How am I going to make amends?_ Her mind was reeling in a void, grappling with the impossibility of answering the question.

The company was listening closely, waiting for her answer. But she was rooted to the spot, her fists clenched and her eyes wide and dark, dark enough to swallow their combined gaze.

'Are you going to say something or not?' said Ron at last, his tone grim again.

'No,' said Hermione at last, dismally bowing her head. 'I can't answer.'

'Well, in that case I'll tell you what I think,' continued Ron. 'And you can just shake your head or nod as you see fit.'

She said nothing and didn't raise her head.

'Maybe this threat is real and maybe it isn't', said Ron. 'You obviously believe it is, but at the same time this is a convenient way to avoid me.'

She shook her lowered head.

'But you are avoiding me. I barely ever see you. When you're not completely out of it, wandering the cosmos or whatever you're doing, you just sit around sulking about the fact that no one takes you seriously.'

This time she nodded slowly, her gaze still directed at the carpet.

'You have no conversation, apart from the latest progress report about how far inside the circle you are.'

She nodded again.

'Did you forget that you're supposed to be in a relationship with Ron?' said Ginny, suddenly stepping in. 'Have you only just noticed you've been paying no attention to him? Perhaps you didn't realise it, but you've taken advantage of the fact that he's been amazingly tolerant.'

Hermione sniffed and wiped her nose before managing a half-nod.

'You stand here telling us that you're a bad person and that for all our sakes you have to go on, getting worse and worse,' said Ron, picking up where his sister left off. 'But that's not really the point. What it really comes down to is that even after all this time, I'm still not good enough for you.'

His voice seemed to rebound off the living room walls.

At last she looked up. There were tears in her eyes and her face was as white as a sheet.

'Is this how you felt?' she said in a soft voice, apparently to no one.

_I did, Hermione_.

'It must have made you so strong.'

_Like I could move heaven and earth._

'Maybe I'm strong enough now to beat you.'

_Not quite._

'But I'm not finished yet.'

'Who are you talking to?' Mrs Weasley exclaimed. Hermione's eyes refocused on the gathered company. A tear rolled down her face. Then she exhaled slowly, her breath rushing weakly out of her. The tears around her eyes seemed to withdraw back into her tear ducts and the light in her eyes seemed to go out.

'To the voice in my head,' she replied at last. 'I think I prefer what it says.' The voice came out cold and sardonic. It seemed to echo around the room. No one dared to speak.

Suddenly Harry was up out of his seat in the corner of the room and standing in front of her, taking hold of her hands.

'Hermione,' he said in a gentle, but commanding voice. 'I know what you're trying to do. You don't have to do it.'

Her eyes didn't meet his.

'Everything's in place,' she said slowly, apparently in answer to him. 'I've become what I'm supposed to become.'

'Forget what's been said here tonight.'

He let go of her hands and looked around at the assembled company, anger on his face.

'They don't know what they're doing. They're just instruments, brought here to torment you, to try and break you. They're useful idiots.'

'Harry Potter!' Mrs Weasley began. 'We're nothing of the …'

'Don't Mum,' Ginny interrupted, not taking her gaze off Harry.

'I'm really sorry,' he said emphatically, still looking at them. 'But you are.'

He turned back to Hermione. Her eyes seemed more focused on him. Reaching out his hands, he guided her head towards his. She watched him silently. He kissed her on the top of the head and held it against his.

'You're not alone. I'll never let that happen. I promised you I'd go with you wherever.'

'Even down into the dark?' Her voice was soft, but loud enough for the room to hear her.

'Even there.'

'Well then,' she replied. 'Come down with me. Tell everyone the truth.'

He looked at her in silence. Then he turned to face the others, taking Hermione by the hand as he did so. They were all staring at him. The expression on Ginny's face was almost unbearable. He could hear his heart pounding in the back of his throat.

'It's all an act,' he began. 'Hermione and me drifting apart, I mean. We intended it as a way to stop hurting Ron and Ginny. So we could all live in peace. Or at least try to. It was a mistake, almost certainly doomed to failure, but it was still the right thing to do. So here we are. You must be feeling that you don't deserve this. And up to a point you'd be right. But only up to a point. Hermione will never say that you don't deserve her, but I will. I'm not even sure I deserve her. But I'm proud to have shared this pretence with her these last two years.'

He kept his gaze fixed on the company. Still there was no reaction other than silence.

Ron was the first to speak.

'Two years my arse,' he said contemptuously. 'What does she wear on her wrist?'

Harry turned and looked at Hermione. She looked curiously at Ron then glanced down at her left wrist. _So that's where we are. Oh how perfect. Of course, that's the memory that was stolen._ The lights' incessant chase around her wrist seemed almost to quicken, the precision of their movements never more graceful. Her hatred for everyone suddenly had no bounds, just as there were none to her love for Harry.

'Would you like to see it Ron?' she asked with sarcastic sweetness. 'It's a pity you can't.'

She reached out and touched her wrist, which to the assembled company was bare and unadorned. 'Not even Harry can. That's how selfless a gift it was.'

'What gift?' said Ginny suddenly, her voice distorted by anguish.

For a moment no one spoke.

'Why don't you tell her, Ron?' Hermione continued in the same voice. She felt exhilarated, but at which emotion she couldn't tell. 'Since you seem to know all about the things that are the most private to me. The things that are the most precious to me.' She raised her other hand and touched the bracelet. The lights were cool as they pulsed through her fingers. She felt light-headed, weightless almost.

'I couldn't even feel it,' said Ron, his voice cracking. 'I couldn't feel it when I touched your arm. When you let me touch it, that is. And it was there all along, around your wrist.'

'Yes, Ron,' she replied. 'All along. Connecting me to him.'

The next instant Ron rushed towards Harry, bundling him onto the floor and punching him repeatedly. It took George and Neville to pull him away and restrain him.

'Did you let him touch you?!' Ron was shouting, still struggling in George's grasp.

Harry pulled himself up from the floor, blood dripping from a split lip.

'You don't get it, do you?' he replied, glaring at Ron. 'It was never about that. It's about friends being loyal to each other.'

'Loyalty to friends?!' Ron exclaimed. 'Are the two of you completely out of your minds or something?'

'Why didn't you listen to her?' said Harry, jabbing his finger in Ron's direction. 'Why didn't you believe her? You call that loyalty? You call arranging this little soiree loyalty? I'd call it betrayal.'

'Betrayal? I haven't betrayed anyone. Unlike you.'

'If you say so. If you don't know what I'm talking about, I'm the last person who should be filling you in.'

'Nice try, Harry,' said Ginny, who until that point had stood rooted to the spot in silence. 'But your betrayal is worse.'

Harry looked at her but couldn't find any words to answer.

'She's right, Harry,' said Hermione, looking up again. '_Our_ betrayal is worse. But _theirs_ will have more serious consequences.'

'What do you have to say, Harry?' said Ginny in a quiet voice. 'Do you hear her? _Us_ and _them_. That's the truth, isn't it?'

'I'm sorry,' said Harry softly. 'I really am, hard as that may be to believe. But I can't let Hermione do this on her own.'

'Oh what a gentleman you are,' said Ginny in the same quiet voice.

_We have to play this through to the end. You'll get better. I'm not sure Hermione will._

'You know,' he replied. 'Lillian Herrick is probably watching us all, laughing her head off.'

'No, you can't use her as an excuse,' replied Ginny. 'Everyone here is acting of their own free will. Including you and her. Don't go claiming that some invisible person is whispering in our ears, sowing discord. All of this is your doing. Don't you remember: our choices define us. The two of you chose to go behind our backs, to be cheats and liars. Hermione found a convenient way of ignoring my brother. I didn't understand why until now, but now I do.'

He hung his head, but couldn't speak.

_You're right, Ginny, you're so right._

'Why did you ever come back?' she said, cutting him off in mid-sentence. 'Why didn't the two of you just run away together? That's obviously what you really wanted to do. Why come back to make fools of me and Ron? How did we ever deserve this?'

Harry looked around the room. A sensation of horror started to build, as the enormity of the situation became clear. He glanced back at Hermione, but her gaze seemed fixed on a distant point.

'Are you impressed now?' she cried out, as if to some unknown spectator. 'Is this enough of a mess for you?'

Finally she seemed to focus again. She looked out at the shocked faces before her.

'I just want to say good luck to everyone,' she said in a style more her own. 'I hope we all see each other again. Maybe we'll even get a chance to fight together against a common enemy. Happy Halloween.'

She turned to Ginny.

'Ginny, there's nothing I can say. Other than if I were in your place I'd be just as disgusted as you are by what I'd witnessed here tonight. I don't dare to ask you if there's any chance of you forgiving me some day. But it's one of the few tiny hopes that I'll be clinging to.'

Then she turned to Ron.

'You know, Harry and I are pretty bad actors. And bad actors are prone to exaggeration.'

'What's that supposed to mean?' said Ron.

'In the end you'll see.'

She glanced at Harry. She started to try and say something to him but no words came out.

Then she fled the glare of the room.


	39. The vigilance of Hermione Granger - Ch17

17\. In the veins

Relentless drizzle was falling on a country lane, pleasantly cool after the heat of the day. Hermione stood completely still and listened in the half-darkness, the nearest streetlight twenty metres away from her. The drizzle made no sound, but it was cool against her cheeks, in contrast to her head, which felt hot and swollen inside her skull. _It's true: the crueller you are, the worse you feel, the stronger it gets_. She started off up the lane, pulling up the hood of her overcoat. _I don't care about the rain. I just want to hide my head_. _Hide from who? She can see me anyway. She sees everything._

She scarcely even saw the car coming down the lane, the unseen driver blasting the horn as the car swerved around her. She felt the rush of metal an inch from her body, but it could have been a mile away. _She thinks I'm as good as one of hers. Not yet, Lillian, not yet. I'm still coming for you, if I don't die of shame first_.

After about a hundred metres she came to an ornate wrought-iron gate. Beyond the gates, the lights of a house were visible at the top of a slightly overgrown upward-sloping front garden. She took out her wand and cast a summoning spell. _Calm. Calm. Forget about it for now. Just expel it from your mind. Should be easy._

A few moments later Caius Hanmer appeared on the other side of the gate. She pulled down her hood for a moment and his eyes widened when he saw it was her. He clicked his fingers and the gate swung open.

'Trick or treat?' she asked, an odd smile on her lips.

'Where's your costume?' he replied with mock seriousness.

'I've come as myself,' she said drily. 'Isn't that scary enough for you?'

He contemplated her for a moment, the rain still coming down on them.

'Didn't bring my bag of sweets to the door I'm afraid,' he said at last, his expression a little more sober.

'Well, it'll have to be a trick then,' she replied, with an air of forced gaiety that struck her as slightly crazed. 'I'm good at those. I can do some particularly nasty ones these days.'

'You can show me inside if you want.'

They walked up the slope towards the house, the two of them scarcely visible against the darkness engulfing the garden. Caius asked no questions, which suited her. Through the gloom, she could make out the rough walls of a sturdy stone house of fairly ancient appearance, light peeking out of several small windows.

'I hope I'm not disturbing anything, or anyone,' said Hermione as Caius opened an old oak door that seemed wider than it was tall and gestured for her to go inside.

'No, I'm here on my own, apart from the house elf,' he replied. 'My parents are in the south of France.'

They stepped into a narrow, rather dimly lit hallway with a flagstone floor.

'I think I remember that you have a sister?' Hermione ventured, slightly embarrassed at how little she knew about him.

'I do have an older sister,' he replied. 'Her name's Braith. She has a farm, high up in the Berwyns.'

'Is that far from here?'

'Not far. We're down in the valley here.'

They stopped in front of a second oak door. Next to it Hermione could make out a medieval-styled painting of a man dressed in bishop's robes. Beneath the painting were the words _Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia_.

'Saint Germanus', said Caius. 'Our household saint, so to speak.'

He pushed open the door and they went into a long, high-ceilinged room with exposed stone walls. A fire burned in an ornate stone fireplace, two armchairs arranged before it. She shivered in spite of herself.

'Are you cold from the rain?' he asked as they went towards the fire.

'No, I found it refreshing,' she replied. 'It was such a hot day today.'

'Not here,' Caius replied. 'Cool and damp most of the day.'

He contemplated her curiously as she held her hands out towards the fire.

'I'm sorry, Caius,' she said, looking across at him. 'I really should explain myself.'

'There's time for that in due course. Can I get you something hot to drink first?'

'Thanks,' she said, nodding gratefully. 'It really is autumn up here.' _That's it, get the pretence going. It's not like you've done anything horrible this evening. You've just come in from the cold, poor thing_. Caius nodded and left the room.

Once she was alone she took off her coat and sat down on one of the armchairs by the fire. A green border ran around the fireplace, which, when combined with the grey of the stone, conjured up the colours of Slytherin. Arranged around the room were various pieces of ancient-looking furniture.

Caius returned quickly, accompanied by a surprisingly tall and very pale house elf bearing a mug of hot soup. He bowed smartly and immediately presented her with the cup of soup, laying it on a trestle table that had appeared next to her armchair.

Before she had a chance to respond, the house elf was besieging her with offers of a bath, food and clean clothes, with a rapidity that seemed to take even Caius by surprise.

She hesitated before the barrage of hospitality. _How can I accept this? After what I've done … What we've done._ What Harry had done was simultaneously the worst and best part about it.

Despite her repeated insistence that she didn't need anything, Caius assured her that resistance to his house elf on matters of hospitality was useless. Shaking her head, she accepted, acknowledging to herself that it was ridiculous for her of all people to think she could refuse a house elf's offer of hospitality. She managed to escape the offer of a bath on the grounds that she had only taken a shower earlier that evening, but was only allowed to explain the night's events to them once she had made reasonable inroads into supper. She felt guilty at how easily the food slipped down. _How convenient it is, all this activity and fussing, it makes it much easier to forget_.

'So?' she said once she had finished bringing Caius up to date. 'What do you think? A complete disaster or only a partial one?'

'I … Just give me a second,' Caius replied, hesitating as he processed all the information and squinting at her oddly. 'You've been … err … pretty methodical about this mess you've made.'

She half-smiled.

'I suppose so,' she said at last.

'Even I'd have been hard pushed to manage something like this.'

'That doesn't make me feel any better,' she replied. 'But then again I don't really deserve to.'

'The only thing that bothers me is that you didn't confide in me,' said Caius in a more serious tone. 'I'd have taken Lillian Herrick seriously.'

'That's true,' said Hermione. 'But as time went on and nothing happened, I just felt more and more embarrassed to mention it to anyone else. No one believed me. And now things have started moving, they're almost moving too fast for me to think clearly. Hence all this mess.'

'So how can I help now?' said Caius. She wasn't sure whether or not there was a trace of reproach in his voice.

'I'm sorry,' she said ruefully. 'I didn't think that far ahead. I just ran out of there like a coward, leaving Harry to clean up the mess. Not that there was any way for him to do that. And this is where I ended up. I'm sorry. I don't want to create any trouble for you.'

Caius laughed out loud.

'Create trouble for me? Don't you know who you're talking to? So what if we have the entire Weasley family cursing me at the front gate by tomorrow morning?'

Again she smiled in spite of herself.

'Seriously, what do you think about all this?' she asked, looking pointedly at him. 'Do you think I'm mad?'

'Let me show you something,' said Caius, suddenly rising to his feet. He beckoned for her to follow him across the room, to a portrait that hung on the far wall. The portrait was of a tall, sober-looking wizard with a dark, greying beard and sharp blue eyes. He wore a long black robe with a coiled, silver-coloured dragon embroidered on his chest.

'My grandfather Lysander,' he said with a smile.

'The Head of the Coven of the White Tooth?' remarked Hermione, looking up at the portrait.

'Ah, you of all people would know that,' said Caius. Then he took out his wand and pointed it at the portrait, muttering an incantation under his breath. The coiled dragon unfurled its wings then flew straight off the painting, disappearing into the darkness.

About a minute later the apparations started, and within less than two minutes 12 wizards were standing before them in Caius's living room. Each was wearing a black robe with the same dragon motif. Hermione turned to Caius with a look of surprise.

'After what happened two years ago,' he said, 'I decided to make a few changes. The first was to come and take over the running of my parents' house, now that they spend most of their time in Languedoc, enjoying what they refer to as their 'well-earned retirement'. And seeing how things have been going at the Ministry, and what with the witchfinders, and the Citadel, and Lillian Herrick and everything, I decided that the kind of work done by my grandfather might someday be in demand again. So I put together a new coven. And here it is. It's a secret for now. Which means that it's an unregistered wizarding organisation. But if you ever need us, you'll have thirteen wizards ready to help you.'

She looked at the assembled wizards and witches and struggled to find something to say to them.

'Sorry to have dragged you out of your homes this evening.' she said after a rather long pause.

'Don't worry, he's been dying to do this for ages.' A tall girl with pale grey eyes and long, wavy blonde hair spoke up from the centre of the line. Hermione realised that the girl's face was familiar from Hogwarts, more precisely from the Gryffindor common room. The girl must have been a few years below her, because the last time she saw her, she was barely into her teens.

'And to tell the truth, we've been dying to get a chance to do this as well,' she added with a broad smile. Hermione scrutinised her bright and pretty face, trying to put a name to it.

'You were in Gryffindor, weren't you?'

'That's right,' said the girl brightly. 'But I think you only ever spoke to me once. I'm Meredith Dulse,' she added sticking out her hand. 'Most of us were at Hogwarts, so we all know you.'

'Oh yes, Meredith Dulse, I remember now!' Hermione exclaimed. 'You're Caius's cousin … Sorry for not remembering,' she added, embarrassed at not having known her name.

'That's alright,' said Meredith. 'I was a few years below you at Hogwarts.'

Now Hermione looked more closely at the faces of the Coven. It was true: most of them looked vaguely familiar, but they must have been much younger and smaller when she last saw them, on the corridors of Hogwarts or, in some cases, even in the Gryffindor Common room.

'Let me introduce everyone,' said Caius. 'Two Gryffindors, three Slytherins, five Ravenclaws and two Hufflepuffs. All fresh out of Hogwarts in the last couple of years or so. From left to right: Bethan, Elijah, Rhian, Azariah, Nia, Osian, Meredith you've just met, Adam Harries and Adam Talfryn you've also met before of course, Sioned, Elen, and lastly someone else you might recognise.'

A small witch, some years older than the rest, was standing demurely at the end of the line.

'Hello Hermione,' she said in a quiet voice, looking at her with big eyes that were instantly recognisable. It was Serena Lynch.

'Serena, I had no idea,' said Hermione, rushing over to greet her. 'I haven't seen you for ages. You did a bit of a disappearing act.'

'I've been living away from wizarding society,' said Serena. 'But Caius tracked me down and asked to join his group. It sort of felt like the right time to come back to magic.'

'She's our secret weapon,' added Caius. Hermione nodded. Neither of them had forgotten Serena's prodigious ability in legilimency.

Hermione looked along the line once again. _The new generation_. She turned to Caius.

'How much does everyone know about what's going on?' she asked. Caius turned to Meredith.

'How much do you know about everything?' he asked.

'We know who Lillian Herrick is and we know about the witchfinders and the new vow wizards, mainly from Serena. We don't know much more than that, but we're ready for action whenever you need us.'

'Do you want to give a stirring speech to the troops?' asked Caius, giving Hermione a wink.

She hesitated for a moment. She wasn't sure if she had any right to give a speech, or if she was even capable of it. She decided she had to say something, regardless of the state she was in.

'This is the second time this evening that I've tried to give a speech about what we're facing,' she began. 'The first one didn't go too well.'

She felt the colour rise to her cheeks and stopped.

The assembled coven followed her in silence.

'I know your faces from when we were all at Hogwarts, even though we never really got much of a chance to know each other.'

'You gave me detention once when you were a prefect,' piped up a small, black-haired wizard she seemed to remember being called Azariah Evans. Everyone smiled, Hermione included.

'A few of you I also recognise from the Ministry,' she continued. 'In which case you'll already have heard that I've gone round the bend.'

There was a little ripple of noise around the group.

'All I can tell you tonight is what I've seen so far. What has been shown to me, by Lillian Herrick herself, are a number of lost openings to the wizarding world. There are at least seven, but I suspect that there could be many more. In fact, we suspect that the entire magical barrier between the magical and the non-magical is weakening.'

She paused.

'You mean the Separation is weakening?' asked a tall, dark-haired witch. Hermione remembered her name was Sioned, but couldn't place her in any of the Hogwarts houses.

'That's right,' she replied.

'That's bad,' Sioned murmured, half towards Hermione, half into the ear of the skinny, green-haired witch standing next to her.

'Very bad,' Hermione concurred. 'But that's more a theory we've got rather than anything concrete. Anyway, this Lillian Herrick claims not only that she has the power to pass through these gates or holes, but that she will show them to Mr Morley, the Witchfinder, and usher him through.'

'A muggle let other muggles through the barrier?' remarked the green-haired witch nervously. 'Can she really do that?'

Hermione nodded soberly.

'I'm afraid so. Not only does Lillian Herrick wield a powerful form of 'white-eyed' magic (here she glanced at Caius), but she also has a sort of coven of her own. And as for these witchfinders, they're well organised, and, as you know, have some rogue wizards helping them.'

'The new vow wizards,' added Meredith.

'Exactly,' Hermione replied. 'That's pretty much it. And that I don't know what to do. I believe I'll be shown the remaining gates, but that won't stop them being breached, if it comes to that. If I'm wrong, or deranged, or just very gullible, that can only be good news for you. But if I'm right, I think you've done the right thing by forming this coven. You'll be better able to protect yourselves and others.'

She stopped and glanced at Caius.

'Sorry, that wasn't a very encouraging speech.'

'At least we know what we're facing now,' said Meredith Dulse. 'That's something.'

'Yes, but not much,' replied Hermione. 'But well done anyway for forming this group.'

'We're only really doing what you did last time, when you faced Voldemort,' said Meredith

Hermione couldn't quite look the girl in the face.

'Things have changed a bit since then,' said Caius suddenly, stepping forward. 'Fighting muggles would be pretty different from fighting Death Eaters.'

Meredith stepped back, trying to catch Hermione's gaze and probing her face with a concerned look.

'You're not on your own, you know,' she said to Hermione in a low voice.

Hermione looked up and smiled. _What a mess I must seem to these people_, she thought to herself. She reached out and put her hand on Meredith's.

'Thanks,' was all she could bring herself to say. A rather long silence followed.

'Do you need us any more tonight?' asked Adam Talfryn.

'No,' said Caius. 'We're done for this evening.'

One by one, the Coven departed. Serena was the last to go. She gave Hermione a long hug before disapparating.

With the room almost empty, she felt tired and deflated. She leaned against an armchair, grasping for a coherent thought.

'You probably want to rest,' said Caius at last.

'If it's ok for me to stay one night, that would be great,' said Hermione.

'You can stay as long as you like,' was the reply.

'Oh, I couldn't do that,' she said sadly. 'But could I make one request though?'

'Of course.'

'Would it be possible for me to be put somewhere far away from the rest of the house?'

'Whatever for?'

'How can I put it?' began Hermione. 'I'm afraid I might be a little bit strange as a houseguest. My nocturnal habits are a bit … odd.'

'Believe me, strange nocturnal habits are nothing new to this house,' replied Caius.

'Please trust me on this one,' said Hermione, as plaintively as she could manage. _Yes, trust me. Ha ha_.

'God knows I've been called a strange guest myself enough times,' said Caius finally, 'I'm not sure the label fits you, Hermione, but if that's what you want, don't worry about it, it can be arranged.'

'Thank you,' said Hermione, a wave of relief washing over her.

'We have a sort of outbuilding at the back end of the garden,' continued Caius. 'A little cottage really. Its front door opens out onto the lower lane. The place has been shut up for a few years, but it's furnished and would just need a good cleaning and airing. It's in a shaded spot, so it's quite private. Nobody would bother you there.'

Hermione smiled.

'It sounds ideal. I can't tell you how grateful I am.'

'Ah, forget it,' said Caius. He looked out the window and frowned slightly.

'Perhaps I should take a look around outside. Just in case. I suppose Lillian Herrick will know you're here.'

'Do you need any help?' said Hermione, beginning to stand up herself.

'No,' replied Caius. 'But come with me anyway and I can show you the cottage.'

When they got outside the rain had stopped altogether. Behind the house was a rather overgrown lawn that ascended a low hill, which concealed the rest of the grounds from the windows on the ground floor. On one side lay a small orchard, while on the far side of the hill was a low gate, which led through a small ornamental garden, marked at its end by a row of ash trees. Beyond the trees, partially screened by a hedge, stood the cottage, a small, rough expanse of grass around it. It was a small, gable-ended building with a lower floor and an attic above it. It stood at a slanting angle towards the fence that ran along the back end of the Hanmer family property.

The building was painted a dull white, while the door and the window frames were black. Once Caius had performed a series of spells to clean and reinvigorate the house, they went inside. The front door led straight into a stone-floored kitchen, which shared the ground floor with a sparsely decorated living room and a rather ancient bathroom. The first floor was divided between two bedrooms, one larger, one smaller. The interior was sparse and tired, but seemed to Hermione to be a more than suitable place to shelter for the night. Caius quickly withdrew, leaving her alone. She passed through the kitchen into the living room and sunk into a musty armchair, unsure if she had the energy to make it up the stairs.

She sat alone in the dim light. _Everything hurts_. She shivered and pulled her legs up under her on the armchair. _I did what had to be done_. A chill ran through her. She stood up quickly, crossing the room to the dark window at its far end. _Can't forget anymore._ There was nothing to be seen through the window, apart from the little beads of rain clinging to the glass. She turned back: the room was lifeless and utterly silent. She walked slowly back to the centre of the room and closed her eyes.

* * *

A bleak, battered hillside rose up before her in the night, ending in a flat peak strewn with boulders and crowned with a jagged rock formation. Flames chased each other into the night sky, high above a single figure that stood before a fire, its elongated shadow darkening the rock walls. _This time it's her in person_. Her long dark hair blowing in the wind, Lillian Herrick followed Hermione with her gaze until she stood in front of the fire. Hermione lingered some distance from the flames.

'Payment accepted,' said Lillian. 'You've earned this one.'

Hermione looked up at the jagged rock formation that spread across the hilltop. At the pinnacle, two contorted masses of rock arched towards each other, almost touching.

'I suppose we'd better get on with it,' said Hermione sullenly.

Lillian half-giggled.

'You seem bored, Hermione.'

_It's pointless trying to hide anything_.

'I'm not bored. I'm tired. Tired of this game. I'm just glad we're nearly done.'

'Unless I've found some more.'

Hermione smiled bitterly.

'That's true. But in the meantime, tell me about this place.'

'You've seen what's above us of course,' said Lillian. Hermione nodded.

At the point where the two outstretched branches of rock met, they seemed to form a door-shaped space. Its edges were smooth, rounded and scorched, as if the opening had been formed by a sudden surge of fire.

'It's known locally as the Burned Door, although some call it the Devil's Peephole. Witches held sabbats here for hundreds of years.'

'Real witches?' Hermione asked.

'In recent times I think only self-imagined ones have been coming here. But it wasn't always like that. What do you think?'

'I can feel traces of genuine magic here,' said Hermione quietly.

The shadow of magic was faint but seemed once to have been powerful. The sensation it created in her was something like a distant, but very large explosion.

'The door has been examined by archaeologists,' Lillian continued. 'They concluded that the fire is man-made and dates back over two thousand years, but they couldn't come up with any plausible explanation for it. Magic isn't a plausible explanation, of course.'

'Of course not.'

'It's supposedly the sight of some terrible act of destruction enacted by an Iron Age wizard,' said Lillian. She had moved to stand next to Hermione as she looked up at the Burned Door.

'The curse was so powerful that you can still feel the trace. Sometimes the rock still feels hot.'

She wondered if the place really could be the site of a battle between some ancient forerunners of Dumbledore and Voldemort. _Why not? There were wizards then too, presumably lost to history._

'In a way, this was the first gateway I found,' said Lillian. 'Although I didn't know it at the time. I visited this hill on a school trip when I was a teenager. Even then I felt that there was something special about the place. I was the last to leave that day. I almost missed the coach. They had to send someone back to get me.'

Hermione looked at her. She seemed younger for a moment, a reminiscence of wide-eyed excitement illuminating her face.

'Do you miss those times?' she asked suddenly.

Lillian continued to gaze up at the door.

'Of course. How could I function if I didn't?'

She turned to look at Hermione, the flames from the fire reflected green in her eyes.

'You understand better now, don't you?'

Hermione nodded.

'You're very strong now, almost strong enough to break me. You really stuck the knife in this evening.'

'I know.'

'And when she got hers, it felt good, didn't it?'

Hermione took a deep breath.

'Yes, it felt good.'

'And how does it feel now?'

'It feels terrible.'

'And the memory of what it feels like to be good is agony.'

'It is.'

'But the light hasn't completely gone out.'

As Lillian spoke, the hope swelled again inside Hermione. Pride in what Harry had done for her that evening.

'No, it hasn't. I'm not alone.'

Lillian contemplated her sadly.

'You're lucky, Hermione. I'm glad for you. Glad that he saw where you were going and decided to come with you.'

'I suppose it makes your victory sweeter,' said Hermione. 'And it means I'm still weaker than you.'

Lillian shook her head slightly.

'This isn't a victory. And even if the hope in you keeps you weaker than me, don't assume it's because I have no hope at all. What was it you said? _I don't know whether I'm supposed to defeat her or lose to her_.'

Hermione frowned.

'You listen in on all my private conversations, I suppose.'

The glimmer of a smile.

'Oh, I wasn't listening in. You were talking directly to me.'

Hermione's heart plummeted. In an instant it seemed like it had passed out through her feet and embedded itself in the ground. _Have I been that careless and stupid?_

'I wouldn't use the word stupid, Hermione.'

She wanted to walk away — no, run away — right that instant. But of course there was nowhere to hide.

'You were so careful the first time you spoke to him. Did that give you a false sense of security? That was perhaps a little careless, after so obviously provoking me to respond.'

'So that's why he seemed so close to giving in.'

'He proved himself to you in the end. That should be a comfort to you.'

'And I suppose you impersonated me that night too.'

'I'm afraid so. I think _mawkish_ was the word that came to his mind. I don't know whether I should take it as criticism or a compliment.'

She tried to look inward, as if there was some physical trace of Lillian inside, a tiny fragment that she could grab hold of and cast out.

'How did you do it?'

'Oh, just a little shifting of time.'

_That's a new one_.

'Of time?'

'Yes. You were both there, at the lake, only not at the same time.'

Hermione exhaled deeply.

'Will you teach me that, if I become one of your helpers?'

'Hermione, I'll teach you everything I know. And you'll do much better than me too. You're so much purer than I am; you have so much more capacity to suffer usefully.'

'You'd have me distrust the breath that comes out of me,' Hermione replied at last, her voice numb.

'You needn't worry about that,' Lillian replied calmly. 'I was just responding to your challenge. It was a demonstration. Next time you speak to Harry, you can be sure you'll be talking to the real one.'

'Thanks, that's so kind of you,' Hermione replied caustically.

'Wasn't I justified in doing it?' Lillian replied, almost a trace of concern in her voice. 'Didn't you try and provoke me by showing how clever you are?'

'Yes, you're right,' said Hermione in the same tone. 'I asked for all of this.'

'Careful, Hermione,' said Lillian. 'Feeling sorry for yourself will only weaken you.'

_I can't get away from her. Either I lay down like a doormat and let the witchfinders come marching through, or I get closer and closer to her. And then goodness knows what will happen_.

'Do you want me to become you?' she said, her voice rising as the anger coursed through her veins. 'Because if you do, we won't be sisters in misery. If I become your equal, I won't have any patience for games or for any kind of twisted sentimentality. I'll be your nightmare, Lillian, I promise.'

She was gone before the inevitable reply came, pushing her way out of Lillian's circle and escaping into the cool, clear air of oblivion.

* * *

The tired, shabby living room in Caius's cottage was before her again, but now every object in the room seemed to gleam with a strange, dark light, in minute detail, excessively real and at the same time utterly artificial. She felt a tingling sensation in her limbs and butterflies in her stomach. Her chest pulsed and throbbed, as if some kind of creature had awakened and was trying to tear itself free. Then she realised that the sensation was the beating of her heart.

She looked over to the window, where a baleful reddish glow seemed to have pushed aside the darkness. A course of action presented it to her. _I've got to get a grip on myself. I'm not going to do that. Anything but that._ She walked over to the window and put her hand straight through the glass. _It's so easy now_. The molten glass yielded, and she passed straight through it and out into the red night.

On the other side of the window was another room. It was immersed in darkness, but it had a familiar musty odour. Through the darkness the regular breathing of a sleeper could be heard. The room quickly revealed its detail. Piled high with papers and boxes, as usual. _So he's fled too. I suppose it's normal he would come here_. She stepped carefully across the rug and approached the bed that lay pushed up against one wall of the room. She stood at the side of the bed and looked down, reaching out a pale hand in the darkness to touch the sleeper. She ran her hand lightly through his hair and let it rest there.

'Wake up, Harry,' she said softly. His eyes flickered open and seemed to search the darkness blindly for a few moments, before finding Hermione's face.

'You seem different,' he said indistinctly, as he tried to shrug off the sleep. 'I can see you even without my glasses on.'

'Yeah, I'm a bit out of it,' she replied, suddenly noticing just how lightheaded she was. 'In fact I'm feeling particularly unpleasant. Cruel almost. Though I suppose it isn't surprising after what I did tonight.'

'You're not capable of cruelty,' said Harry.

'No?'

'Not really.'

He pulled himself up into a sitting position and reached around until he located his glasses. Hermione kneeled alongside the bed, her head tipped slightly to one side.

'Wasn't I cruel tonight? Beyond what was necessary. Beyond what was even true.'

The details of the evening began to come back to him. How they had all stared at him once Hermione had left. Ginny had taken out her wand and pointed it at him, as if to hex him. A tear had rolled down her cheek as she lowered her wand.

'Yes, but it was necessary, wasn't it?' he said.

'Yes, it was. But the thing is: it's not even repulsive to me. I'm starting to lose sight of where the line is, Harry.'

'That's why I couldn't let you do it alone.'

She seemed to be watching him with a strange smile on her face.

'Here we are again, eh?' she said, almost brightly.

'Yeah,' he replied. 'It kind of seemed appropriate to come back here.'

'Outside the wizarding world?'

'Something like that.'

'You had to get out of there too.'

Back in the living room, he had flailed around for a while for something to say, but a single phrase kept repeating in his head: _it's over_.

Ginny's last words to him had been: '_I don't know why she said you're bad actors. The two of you deserve an award. Particularly for your performance that night two years ago when you came walking back into the Burrow. You really had me fooled_.' Then she had disapparated from the room. He had been left standing there, gawping at everyone who was left. What was it he had mumbled to them?

'_If you think things are bad now, just wait: they're only going to get worse_.'

Neville had been the only one to reply.

'_When that day comes, Harry, we'll all be there. Until then, you'd better sort yourself out_.'

_This is probably about as sorted as I'll ever be_. He remembered thinking that thought before he disapparated.

'You feel terrible I suppose,' said Hermione.

'Not great,' said Harry.

'I thought so. When I feel it I get stronger.'

She seemed to begin to drift away from the bedside. He stood up quickly and caught her by the arm.

'You're starting to sound like her.'

She smiled.

'That's hardly surprising.'

A scary thought occurred to him.

'Is that even you in there, Hermione?' he said with alarm.

She tried to extricate her arm from his grasp, but he wouldn't let go.

'Don't go that way, Harry,' she replied, her expression more serious. 'We'll never get anywhere if we don't even know who we're speaking to.'

'That's not convincing enough.'

'This is me and you're just going to have to get used to it,' she replied, her head swaying slightly as she spoke. The next moment he had pulled his wand out from underneath the pillow and had it pointing it at her. Her eyes glazed over in surprise and she started to laugh.

'What are you going to do? Exorcise me?'

He shook his head.

'Whatever's in there, it needs flushing out.'

Anger flashed across her face.

'I need to be like this to defeat her!'

'No you don't. You need to be how you usually are. How you are with me.'

The charm that occurred to him was a counter curse for the imperius curse. _It's a stab in the dark_, he reflected. But he cast the curse anyway, straight in her face. Its impact threw her backwards, causing her to half-stumble across the floor. Then she lurched forward and caught Harry by the arm. She looked up at him, her gaze dark and rigid.

'You ok?' he asked, his heart pounding.

'Much better,' she said, her voice softer and calmer as she straightened up. 'Thanks. By the way, it was me all along.'

'I know.'

'But you said…'

'As soon as the words left my mouth I knew it was you.'

They sat down on the bed next to each other. After a few moments of silence Hermione let out a jagged sob. Harry put his hand around her shoulder and pulled her against him.

'What's wrong with me?' she exclaimed, suddenly turning in his arms to face him. 'You gave up everything for me tonight and I turn up here like some sort of drugged up psycho. I'd ask you to kill me right now, Harry, if I thought it'd fix a single thing.'

'Don't say anything,' said Harry gently. 'This is all so beyond words.'

She pressed her forehead against his temple. Silence enveloped them.

'Even when you curse me it does me good,' she said at last.

He smiled. A little smile of hope. He turned her face to his to examine it.

'I didn't do you any damage then?'

She kissed him softly on the cheek.

'None at all. You were right of course. It's no good me becoming like her. But for a moment there I thought I did. I don't think even she wants that.'

'You've seen her tonight?' he asked. She nodded.

'I didn't handle that very well either.'

She looked around the spare room above Armin's shop. Her face was white but her movements and gestures were more precise and deliberate.

'He still hasn't tidied up in here,' she remarked.

'I don't suppose he ever will.'

'Do you think I woke him up with my behaviour?'

'Actually I don't know if he's here. He said he was going to some late night session. A seance or something like that.'

'That's a shame,' she remarked. 'He might have enjoyed this little scene.'

'So what do we do now?' he asked.

'No idea to be honest. Just wait for things to develop?'

He looked around very deliberately into her eyes.

'That is you in there after all?'

She smiled.

'Yes, it is. Sorry. Not feeling very inspired at the moment. I think I should just sleep. So should you, by the way. With any luck you won't have any more crazed interruptions during the night.'

_Who knows?_

'Did you want to stay here?' he asked.

'Thanks, but it's probably not a good idea. Things look bad enough as it is. Anyway, Caius has fixed me up with a place to stay.'

'Caius?'

'Yeah, in a cottage in the grounds of his parents' house.'

'Oh yeah, I think I know where you mean.'

'You've been to his house before?'

'To Garmons? Yeah, it's nice. Really… uh… solid.'

'It gave me that impression too. Did you ever meet his sister?'

'Braith? Yeah. She's not much like Caius. Very down to earth and responsible.'

'I don't know, Caius strikes me as pretty responsible these days.'

They sat in silence for what felt like a long time. Outside the window they could hear the dripping of rainwater from the gutter.

'How are we going to make amends?' Harry said suddenly.

Hermione smiled bitterly.

'I don't know. We have to solve all this first.'


	40. The vigilance of Hermione Granger - Ch18

18\. The silent partner

The corridors of the Ministry seemed more cold, dank and echoing than usual, but Hermione told herself that was probably just her imagination. She flitted down the corridor to her office, like a ghost caught out in the open after daybreak. Once inside, she shut the door behind her and sank down behind her desk. After a few moments of staring blankly in front of her, she took out her work and laid it out on the desk.

She had made scarcely a mark on the paper when a knock at the door made her look up.

'Uh … come in?' she called out. _Not very convincing_.

The door opened. It was Julia Massey from her department. She smiled gently, almost sympathetically, Hermione thought, as she breezed into the room, her long blonde hair hanging loosely down to her chest. She was wearing a silvery grey tea dress in a vaguely 20s or 30s style.

'Hi Hermione,' she said in her high, slightly childlike voice.

'Hello Julia.'

Julia stopped just in front of Hermione's desk, her hands clasped together. Hermione surmised that she had been sent by Fuchsia and Jocasta to quiz her as she was on better terms with her than either of them and therefore more likely to get something out of her.

'Um … so how are you?'

_Am I really going to confide anything in her? Am I going to be evasive or stroppy?_ She looked at Julia, realising that she didn't know what the girl really thought of her.

_I'm going to be nice_. _But first I want some information on her_.

She got up from her chair and went over to a filing cabinet in the corner of the office.

'Sorry, I've just got to get something for later on,' she said, bending down and opening one of the drawers at random. 'Why don't you sit down?'

'Thanks,' Julia replied, sitting down on the visitor's chair.

Hermione lowered her head, her hair half falling down across her eyes. Already she could scarcely see what was in front of her, the words of the incantation spilling out of her, the circle whirring faster and faster.

Once she was in, she stood up quickly and walked back to her desk, a file in her hand that she didn't even remember taking. She was feeling lightheaded again.

'I suppose you heard,' she said, looking straight into Julia's eyes. Julia looked away for a moment, seemingly a little embarrassed that she was sitting there. _Their secret agent_.

She could see them now quite clearly, Julia, Fuchsia and Jocasta, plus that Lorelei Boykin.

'_Someone's got to ask her,' _Fuchsia was saying.

'_But do you think she'll admit to anything?' _Lorelei replied. '_She's pretty twisted.'_

_Twisted am I, Lorelei, is that so? What do you know about me? You've barely ever even spoken to me._

'_Julia, do you think you could give it a try?' _said Jocasta, giving her friend a big-eyed, plaintive look. Julia had her doubts. Qualms about doing it.

'_It's not like I'm all that close to Hermione. I'm not sure she would tell me anything.' _It's a bit dishonest, Julia had thought to herself.

_Nice of you to think so, Julia. But you're still here in my office, scavenging for gossip._

'_But she likes you,'_ said Fuchsia. '_As far as she likes anyone.'_

'_Apart from Harry Potter,'_ Lorelei commented. They had sniggered about that among themselves.

'_All right then_,' Julia was saying. '_But I'm not going to really pester her about it. If she doesn't want to tell me, that's it._'

_How decent of you, Julia_.

Julia smiled and twirled her finger around the end of one of her long locks of hair. She wore a silver locket on a chain with a blue stone at its centre, nestling in her chest. _It matches her eyes._

'Heard what?' she asked innocently. Hermione smiled.

'Don't worry, Julia, you don't have to try and protect my feelings.'

Julia tilted her head a little to the side. _Will that help you to see into me better_?

'I didn't think you'd really want to talk about it.'

'Oh, I don't mind. And I can't hide from it anyway.'

_Speaking of hiding things …_ A feeling of jealousy surged into sight. For a moment Hermione didn't want to look. She knew it was wrong to look, but she wasn't going to allow herself to feel guilty over Julia and her friends. The feeling of jealousy didn't dissipate; instead it swirled about in the empty space of the room, pressing up against Hermione's mind, asking to come in. _I have to let it in._ Now it revealed itself, unpacked itself in her thoughts: it was the jealousy that nagged at Julia's subconscious, not her jealousy of someone else, but the jealousy she inspired in another.

_Miranda, why can't you just like me_?

Now she saw Julia's less attractive and less successful sister. Jealousy poisoned their meetings and hung in the air even when they spoke over the phone. _It's not fair_. _I've never given her any reason to be jealous of me. And it's not like Mum and Dad treat me any differently from her. _Hermione contemplated the sister's face: rounder, slightly ruddy, angry grey eyes, reddish hair cut in an untidy bob. She was the best part of six inches shorter too, dressed simply in a shapeless hoodie and cheap jeans. _She could make more of an effort over her appearance. It wouldn't be so hard. _The eyes flashed with displeasure and pain when Julia walked into the room. _And just because they didn't offer her that job at the Ministry, doesn't mean she can't try again. It's not my fault. I always try to be nice to her._

'I can guess what people are saying,' said Hermione, smiling faintly across the desk.

'Can you?' said Julia.

'But it isn't true.'

'So you aren't seeing each other?'

Hermione folded her arms with a brisk gesture.

'No! Why is it people think a man and a woman can't be close friends, best friends even, without something else going on.'

Julia propped her elbows on the desk and leaned her face a little closer to Hermione's.

'But hadn't you and Harry supposedly got a bit …?'

'Distant?'

'Uh … yes.'

'All we really ever did was to agree that it would be better for everyone if we stopped hanging around together so much. To make it much easier for _certain people_, who could never quite believe we were just friends, despite the facts. We had to do it, to stop certain people from being _jealous_. Do you know what I mean?'

Julia nodded, her attention totally focused on Hermione.

_It might be a good idea not to dress so smartly when you come round,_ Mum had told her. _And maybe it's not such a good idea to bring your boyfriends round to the house so often. I know it's not your fault, love. Don't think anything of it. I just want the two of you to get on._

'It is slightly dishonest, what Harry and I did,' Hermione continued. 'That's why I don't feel good about what's happened. I know I'm partly at fault. It was done with good intentions, but it was probably a mistake. It was bound to come out in the end.'

_Don't think I don't know what you're doing,_ Miranda had said to her once, when their mother was out of the room. _You can't hide anything from me. Just because you've stopped showing off your expensive clothes and going on about your amazing social life doesn't make you any less superior about it._

Julia's mouth was scrunched up very small and her eyes seemed bigger than usual.

'So you see, it's not so exciting after all,' Hermione said. 'It's a mess, but not the mess everyone thinks it is.'

'I understand,' said Julia softly.

'Can I ask you a favour?' said Hermione. 'I really don't want to spread rumours about Ron or Ginny. It wouldn't be fair. They've suffered enough already. Is that ok with you?'

'Oh sure,' Julia replied, getting up out of her seat and pushing her hair back over her shoulder.

'Oh, by the way,' she added. 'Harold would like a word with you.'

'Uhh … ok, thanks. I'll go and see him in a couple of minutes.'

Two minutes later Hermione swept out of her office and into the corridor. The eyes of the others were on her in an instant. She walked down the corridor as quickly as she could manage, nodding politely to every face she encountered. She felt sure that the disgust she felt at what she had just done must show on her face. _I feel like I'm up to my eyeballs in it_. And quite naturally, the stronger the guilt, the more powerful she felt. She even caught a glimpse of Julia looking meekly out of Fuchsia's office. Even the sight of her with her co-conspirators did nothing to temper the disgust.

Harold Hawkwell's reason for needing to see her struck her as flimsy. As she sketched out a solution to an administrative problem she could swear he had already asked her about, she had the distinct impression that his dark, runny eyes were probing her gaze for something else. Had she sunk to new depths of paranoia or could it be that he too wanted to gawp at her?

Once out of his office, a new procession of polite but inquisitive eyes paraded past her in the corridor. As she approached the door to the stairwell, her pace had quickened so much that she could be setting a new wizarding record for walking the corridors of the Ministry, if anyone cared to record such things.

When she arrived back in her office she found a memo had deposited itself on her desk. She looked at the memo but could scarcely see it. _How will I make amends_? It was the only thought that seemed to be getting processed. At last she managed to distract her mind enough to make it snap out of its refrain and focus instead on the unread memo on her desk. The memo unfurled itself obligingly as soon as her hand came into contact with it.

_You may be in need of some good news today. We located Rachel Thirlwell._

_xxx Argenta_

She scrawled a reply and dispatched it straight away.

_That's excellent. When should we meet?_

Argenta's reply soon followed.

_Isaac's away at the moment. He said he's made an appointment for tomorrow, so you should speak before then. How are you otherwise?_

_Fine. Just need to focus on something else._

_Fair enough. Just to check: the rumours aren't actually true, are they?_

The rumours had even made it to Argenta, in her splendid isolation in Muggle Relations.

_No, they're not. But there's more to tell. I'll tell you in person._

_Only if you want to._

_I do. I have to try and be honest now. But funnily enough, we had good intentions._

_Good intentions. Oh yes, they can be very nasty._

* * *

It wasn't quite yet getting dark as Harry slipped out of the Ministry and plunged into the masses swarming the early evening London streets. He pulled his hood up and lowered his head, eager to put as many muggle bodies as possible between him and the wizarding world. The entire day had been one of whispers behind his back and snide looks in his direction. One witch he had never spoken to before in his life had walked right up to him in the corridor and told him that she thought his behaviour disgusting, that she had never thought him of all people to be capable of cheating on his best friend. But judging by the murmured snatches of conversations he had caught in the offices and corridors, plenty of people were not at all surprised. Some seemed almost jubilant about it. He knew what they thought had happened. It wasn't true, but nor was it true that _nothing_ had happened. And what _had_ happened was a bit weird and hard to explain. He hadn't seen Hermione, but he could imagine that her day had probably gone even worse.

The faces of the muggles surrounding him had a calming effect on him. He slackened his pace, so that he was no longer overtaking and barging past people, or repeatedly stepping down and back up the curb in order to make progress through the crowds. He had been walking for at least ten minutes before it occurred to him to check if there was anyone following him. And for the fifth time that day he wondered whether his messages were being intercepted. As much as he hated to admit it, he was expecting the press to take an interest. _Is that really the first thing I think of? How sad_. As he approached the end of Ludgate Hill he took a sharp glance behind him. He was quick enough to see the edge of an overcoat disappearing out of sight, either down an alley or in through a shop door. Cursing under his breath, he turned the corner onto the first side street he saw. The street lay deep in shadow, overlooked by two tall office blocks. It was short, ending almost immediately in a flight of steps. He climbed the steps two at a time and continued into the tangle of backstreets that lay at the top of them. He glanced back down the street for a moment, glimpsing the tower of St Bride's rising above the deep channel made by the tall buildings. Then it occurred to him that his attempts to lose the person following him were likely to be completely pointless. His pursuer was bound to be using magic to stay on his trail. He could wander about on random streets all afternoon and would still never be rid of him.

He made his way back out onto Ludgate Hill and hailed the first cab he saw. 'Exmouth Market' he said quickly, naming the first destination that came to his head. The cab driver looked at him with displeasure but didn't refuse him and he hauled himself inside the taxi. The taxi crawled in the traffic, making little progress. He glanced out at the window, squinting suspiciously at the pedestrians going past, wondering which one of them was his pursuer. Finally the taxi turned the corner and hit a slightly faster moving stretch of traffic. He took out his mobile phone, remembering how long he had held out before getting one, and slowly typed out a text message, trying to make it as vague as possible. _C__an you be at Armin's in half an hour?_

The taxi pulled up on a street parallel to Exmouth Market. He hurriedly paid the driver from the stock of muggle money he always carried, and got out of the cab. It began to drizzle as he strode past the shop fronts, some of which had changed and become smarter since he had last paid any attention to them.

The shop window for Vlaminck's Esoteric and Occult was small and its window display so low-key and dusty that it could easily be missed. But the 'closed' sign taped up in the window took him by surprise. That was odd: it had been Armin himself who had invited Harry and Hermione to pay him a visit at the shop. He glanced up and down the street in the vain hope that he might catch sight of his former employer then reached into his pocket for the key. He was about to insert it into the lock when he decided it would be better to wait for Hermione. He decided not to knock either. Maybe Armin had closed the shop early on purpose.

He turned and leaned against the shop door, looking out at the rain coming down past the awning and smiling apologetically at a passer-by who looked at him rather suspiciously. The rain was getting more persistent, scraps of it wafting in under the awning, leaving his trousers and jacket damp and clammy. After several minutes, the equally forlorn figure of Hermione came into sight as she drifted down the street, the hood of her jacket pulled tight over her head. She looked quizzically at Harry, before frowning at the closed sign and the locked door.

'Closed? Why is he closed?'

'Don't know,' said Harry, stepping forward to meet her. 'He should be open, it's the middle of the week. He's _always_ open at this time.'

Hermione glanced up the street then turned back to Harry, pulling him by the jacket under the eaves of the shop.

'I bet we're being watched,' she hissed. 'Someone was following me.'

'Me too,' said Harry.

There was a morose, cloudy look in her eyes.

'Do we know this invitation is genuine?'

Harry pursed his lips.

'If it isn't, it means someone in the Ministry knows about Armin.'

'You're right,' said Hermione tersely. 'It's probably just me being too paranoid.'

'You've got good reason to be paranoid.'

'Maybe,' she replied before adding, 'don't you have a key?'

'I do, but I was waiting for you to get here.'

Her expression softened.

'Thanks,' she said. 'But it's probably a bad idea us being seen together like this.'

'Even now?'

She glanced out suspiciously at the passers-by on the street.

'Even now.'

He was about to say something when the door opened behind him. Armin Vlaminck's thin, ruddy face peered around the door, his pale blonde hair hanging down either side of his face.

'Come in,' he said in a low voice, opening the door just wide enough to let them in. They stepped into the bookshop, shivering and shaking the rain out of their clothes.

'We've been expecting you,' said Armin mysteriously as he shook their hands and beckoned for them to follow him through the shop.

'We?' Harry asked.

'You'll see in a minute.'

'I'm not sure I like the sound of that,' Hermione remarked.

'It's to do with the Seven-Pointed Circle,' said Armin.

'What about it?' Hermione insisted.

'There's someone who wants to meet you and talk about it.'

'Is it a man or a woman?' asked Hermione.

'A man.'

He led them through the cramped hallway that led to the upstairs flat then up the stairs in the living room.

Out of the corner of her eye Hermione caught sight of Harry checking his wand. _That probably won't help us much_.

Armin opened the door into the living room of the flat and ushered them inside.

'We're having a sort of board meeting,' Armin explained.

The living room was as cramped and cluttered as the shop itself. It served as an additional store room and a repository for Armin's vast personal collection of books, music and films. The table that sat in the window, which was usually overrunning with papers and books, had been cleared of its clutter. Sitting at the table was a soberly dressed man somewhere between 50 and 60, with tanned skin and a clipped grey beard. As they entered, he rose and made a little bow.

'Hermione, Harry, this is Mr Zurabian,' said Armin, gesturing at the grey-haired man. He was rather diminutive, no more than about five foot six, and wore a smart grey suit. Coal black eyes flashed from his tanned face. As Hermione looked at him, the eyes she felt fixing her gaze seemed to express unfathomable age.

'Very pleased to meet you,' said Mr Zurabian. He kissed Hermione's hand and reached out his hand to shake Harry's. As he did so, a strange light seemed to flicker in his eyes, and he hesitated for a moment before finally shaking Harry's hand. He sat down quickly again at the table, took out a handkerchief and wiped a bead of sweat from his brow. Armin pulled up two chairs for Harry and Hermione.

'Mr Zurabian is part owner of Vlaminck's,' said Armin, who stood behind them, lingering in the middle of the living room.

'A mere sleeping partner,' said Mr Zurabian with an urbane smile.

'He's being modest,' continued Armin. 'He's the biggest investor in our business and has donated half of the rare materials in our archive.'

'I am a businessman, among other things,' said Mr Zurabian, smiling at Harry and Hermione. 'But this is of little concern to the matter at hand.'

'The matter at hand being the Seven-Pointed Circle,' said Hermione briskly.

Mr Zurabian nodded quickly, his eyes twinkling with interest.

'Quite so.'

'I'm just going to make some tea,' said Armin from across the room.

'A very good idea,' said Mr Zurabian, raising his head in Armin's direction.

Armin left the room and went next door to the flat's small kitchen. Mr Zurabian turned back to Harry and Hermione.

'I've been looking forward to meeting you in person,' said Mr Zurabian, looking at Hermione. 'Until now I've only caught glimpses of you.'

'Glimpses of me?'

'Walking beneath the red sky.'

'So you've seen me,' said Hermione cautiously. 'But I've never seen you.'

This was a worrying development, one that she cursed herself for not giving more attention to.

'I could hardly avoid seeing you,' said Mr Zurabian. His tone was urbane, friendly almost. 'When someone new strays into my vision, I make it my business to know their business.'

'And what is my business?' Hermione asked, staring pointedly at him.

'Trying to preserve the secrecy of wizards.'

Hermione exhaled shallowly.

'I suppose it's no surprise you know about wizards,' she replied. Mr Zurabian bowed his head slightly in reply.

'Then you know about Lillian Herrick.'

He nodded again.

'An interesting character,' he remarked, a wry smile on his lips.

'Quite a dangerous one though,' Harry put in.

'Not by the standards of that place,' Mr Zurabian replied. Suddenly his face seemed graver and older.

'What do you mean?' Hermione asked.

'You go striding in, quite oblivious to your surroundings. Even Lillian Herrick treads carefully there. There are some whose attention you do not want to arouse.'

'Is this some kind of a threat?' said Hermione.

'Not at all,' he replied. 'I am not one of them. I am no adversary to you.'

At that point Armin returned, carrying a tray laden with cups of tea. He set them down on the table and sat down on an armchair in the more cluttered part of the living room, listening to the conversation in silence.

'As I was saying, Miss Granger,' Mr Zurabian added, glancing around the company with a wary look. 'I am not your enemy. I want to help you, as far as I can. I wish to give you something. That is why you were called here today.'

Hermione looked at Harry. His gaze was as taut and serious as she imagined hers to be. But although she was poised to take evasive action, she didn't really feel it would be necessary.

Mr Zurabian sat up slightly in his chair and his eyes seemed to turn opaque. For a few moments he sat in perfect stillness. Then as his eyes seemed to clear again he opened his fist. In his palm lay a plain, tiny silver key. He extended his hand.

'This is for you,' he said to Hermione in a voice of gentle reverence.

'What is it?' she said.

'The key to my house,' said Mr Zurabian. 'You understand me, of course.'

'I do,' she replied, not taking her eyes off the key. 'Though I never thought that a house in that place would actually have a real key.'

'It's a symbol of course,' said Mr Zurabian. 'I could have given it any form. But since it is a sort of key, why not give it the shape of one?'

Hermione reached out and took the key.

'Hermione,' said Harry. 'What is this about?'

She looked up and smiled at him. At the same time her gaze was far away.

'Under the red sky', she said softly. 'We all have a house, or at least a place where we can build one. Yours is the island you told me about. I have one too, though it's completely undeveloped. Mr Zurabian, it seems, has one too.'

Mr Zurabian smiled.

'For most, the house, as it is called in the texts, is a bare, undeveloped expanse of earth. For some it may be a garden that we cultivate. A few have erected actual houses. Some of them are splendid feats of imaginary engineering. I myself have spent a long time building mine.'

Hermione held up the key in her hand.

'Why are you giving me this?'

'In case you ever need to take shelter there. Believe me, I don't give it out lightly.'

'Whom should I shelter from? Lillian Herrick?'

'I am not here to intervene in your business with her. But I admire you, and I believe that when you walk beneath the red sky, you need some place of refuge.'

'From these others you mentioned, then.'

Again the vitality seemed to drain from his face.

'Yes, from them,' he replied.

'Who are they?' Harry exclaimed. Suddenly he felt very irritable, but without any clear reason.

'Let us not speak so much of them,' replied Mr Zurabian, looking at Harry with a look of mingled curiosity and fear. 'They go where they will. Mostly in that place, but sometimes here, if they wish. They live chiefly to satisfy their wills and their appetites. Here they come mainly when the dead bodies start to pile up.'

'Dead bodies?'

Mr Zurabian nodded.

'The last time they were attracted here was when Voldemort's killing was at its peak.'

'Are they human?' asked Hermione.

'Yes, they are human … like you or I,' replied Zurabian. 'But since they spend so little time breathing the air of the waking world, they are very long lived. The first and oldest of them is nearly a thousand years old.'

'A thousand?' said Hermione. 'I thought if you neglect your physical body too long down there it dies.'

Mr Zurabian nodded, his eyes closed briefly.

'That is true,' he replied. 'But they have ways to avoid death.'

Again Harry felt something stirring in him. A strange, inexplicable anger swelled up for a moment then seemed to abate somewhat.

'What are their names?' he said pointedly, almost demanding the information.

Mr Zurabian shook his head.

'I have no name for them. They are old, and they speak an old tongue. They may have a name for themselves, but only those who are initiated into their number may know it. '

'How would you know that, unless you're one of them?' Hermione remarked.

'A fair question,' replied Zurabian. 'I know them because once, when I was young I sought to join them. But I turned away before my initiation was complete, thank goodness.'

'So you say, anyway,' Harry replied.

Mr Zurabian looked at him stiffly.

'I understand your distrust of me,' he said gravely. Then his gaze turned to Hermione.

'What are your thoughts?'

'I suppose you can see them.'

'I could but I am not looking.'

She studied him again for a few moments then looked at the key, which gleamed in her hand.

'I can't trust your appearance,' she said. 'That could be manufactured to serve any purpose. But I think I trust your intentions.'

Mr Zurabian smiled briefly and nodded.

'But I still want to ask you a few things.'

'That's understandable.'

'What brought you to the Circle in the first place?'

'The thirst for knowledge. The promise of being able to perform acts that were beyond what is natural. The prospect of putting off death.'

'And joining this mysterious group was a way to achieve that?'

'Yes,' said Mr Zurabian, 'but their method was too terrible.'

'And that's why you didn't complete your initiation?'

He nodded.

'Why?'

'It would have involved eating human flesh.'

The words hung in the room. There was a look on Mr Zurabian's face as if the proposition had just been put to him again anew.

'How old are you?'

'Older than I look.'

'Do you know Gondulph Belhaine?'

'Yes, I know him. But he doesn't know Mr Zurabian.'

'I understand,' Hermione replied. 'Does he walk beneath the red sky?'

'He knows of its existence, but he does not walk there.'

'Have you warned him of the danger awaiting the wizarding world?'

Mr Zurabian looked hurriedly around him.

'It matters not if they hear. I am a marked man anyway. What I have spoken of to Gondulph Belhaine is nothing but the merest of hints. Because the vaguest of hints is all that I can grasp. All that I want to grasp.'

'Can Lillian Herrick be stopped from carrying out her plan?'

'From throwing open the gates of your world? Perhaps. But I fear you would need more time than you've got.'

'How much time do we need?'

'More time than she is prepared to give you.'

'So we should give up?'

Mr Zurabian shook his head.

'You know very well that this act of exposure is only the beginning.'

Hermione looked sadly at Harry then back at Mr Zurabian.

'You mean I have to go where she wants to take me?'

His eyes seemed almost dizzying in their blackness.

'Until it's no longer clear who's leading who. Then you may find that it is you who has taken the lead.'

The room fell into silence.

'Have you never considered giving this up?' said Hermione once she could bring herself to break the silence.

His face was keen and inscrutable.

'Give it up and die, you mean.'

'Yes.'

'I have considered it countless times over countless years. But I have never been able to walk away.' He smiled weakly. 'Don't follow too closely in my footsteps, Miss Granger. You have too much to live for here in the waking world.'

They lapsed again into silence. Hermione half-slumped back in her chair, but didn't take her eyes off Mr Zurabian. At last she leaned forward again, holding up the key between her fingers. The next instant it was gone from her hand.

'You won't mind if we don't exchange keys?' she said calmly.

He chuckled at this.

'No, of course not.'

Then he glanced down at his watch.

'I'm afraid time is running short.'

_How can time run short for him?_

He swayed lithely to his feet and stepped out from behind the table.

'I wish you good luck with all your endeavours,' said Mr Zurabian. 'And I'm pleased to have met you, Mr Potter,' he added, the same stiffness in his gaze. When he turned to Hermione his expression was more relaxed.

'I will be at home anytime you wish to visit.'

'Thank you,' she replied.

He nodded and stepped away from the table.

'Mr Zurabian,' said Harry suddenly. The older man turned and looked at him.

'Yes?' he said softly.

'What is it about me that bothers you?'

He glanced at Hermione then back at Harry.

'Forgive me,' he said, almost obsequiously. 'I admit that I cannot help … flinching in your presence.'

'But why?' said Hermione.

Mr Zurabian looked slightly embarrassed. He tried to fix Harry with his gaze but couldn't hold it.

'It's because I felt death in your handshake,' he said at last.

'Death?' echoed Harry.

'You passed to that side and returned,' said Mr Zurabian. The fear in his voice was palpable. 'You came back with the trace of death upon you. I feel it so strongly because I am so old, and so close to death myself.'

Before Harry had a chance to question Mr Zurabian any further, the man was already halfway out of the room, shaking Armin's hand, and promising to keep in touch.

'Thanks for everything,' said Armin. Then Mr Zurabian was gone. They heard his even tread on the stairs, followed by the sound of the door closing gently downstairs.


	41. The vigilance of Hermione Granger - Ch19

19\. The fasting of demons

Caius's cottage stood in darkness, the only light coming from the kitchen window. Hermione sat at the heavy, pockmarked kitchen table, her face pale in the glare of the single light bulb that protruded from the ceiling. Sitting before her on the kitchen table was an unmarked glass bottle containing a black liquid.

'_Sure this is a good idea_?' Caius had asked her before handing over the bottle.

'_I don't have good ideas anymore_,' she had replied.

'_Do you want me there as some kind of back-up?_' he had asked.

'_No, I'll be alright, I think_.'

The kitchen had a desolate, abandoned air about it. She had tidied away the tea things and put the few provisions in the house away in the cupboards, as if she was preparing to lock up the house and leave.

Isaac Edwards had located Rachel Thirlwell, and had made an appointment with her for ten o'clock that evening. He was also carrying a flask of Dementico, or Lillian Herrick's special brew, as he called it. The trick was going to be to get Rachel Thirlwell to drink from it too.

'_She might have been warned, of course_,' Isaac had said.

'_Then again, she might not_,' Hermione had replied. '_It'll make the show more entertaining, and it'll be more of a test for Lillian Herrick if she decides to help her_.'

Noticing the sound of rain outside, she got up and looked out into the darkness. _I still have a few minutes._ A little of the light from the back lane behind the house made it as far as the cottage, making a dull orange background for the raindrops splashing against the grimy kitchen window. Out in the lane nothing was moving.

'_But do you think there's any chance of convincing her to leave Lillian_?' she had said to Isaac.

'_I don't know, but I'm going to try anyway_.' He had seemed to shiver as he spoke the words. _He has something up his sleeve_. She could look for herself of course, but if he wasn't willing to tell her, she wasn't willing to try. She had sworn to herself she wouldn't do that again.

'_Isn't it worth us going on the offensive_?' he had added, the tension, or the nerves, still palpable in his voice.

'_Even if we win, how will we know that we really won and weren't just allowed to win?_'

'_Is that a reason to do nothing?_'

'_No_. _It isn't_.'

The cold seeped easily through the single window pane. She pulled the belt around her cardigan a little tighter. She was wearing a scarf to shield her from the cold and damp that had set in. The sickly heat that had ushered in Halloween was a distant memory. _Should I have told Harry what I'm planning to do?_ She looked away from the window and drifted back to the table, her gaze falling on the innocuous little bottle of black liquid. _I don't know_.

* * *

A street at night unfolded in front of her at a fast walking pace. The image before was slightly blurred, and she squinted instinctively in an attempt to make the picture clearer, but this had no effect. On the left-hand of the street was a series of shop fronts, some closed for the evening, some boarded up. A dirty brick wall ran along the other side of the street, and the dim clanking of a train could be heard from a cutting below. Isaac walked at a relentless pace, and Hermione felt a sensation of disorientation, as if her head was moving without her legs. A teenaged boy in a tracksuit crossed the street in front of him, head down and smoking a cigarette, and was narrowly missed by a car. The boy stopped before a door that opened onto the street and started hammering on it. Isaac pressed on, passing the brightly lit window of a kebab shop, before crossing the road himself and stopping before a brick-fronted post-war block of flats.

He looked down a row of doorbells with flat numbers next to them, selected one and pressed it. A girl's voice said 'third floor' through the metal grill above the doorbells and he was buzzed in. He glanced for a moment at the lift then made instead for the stairs. The stairwell was utilitarian, with bare brick walls and concrete steps, but it seemed fairly clean.

The door opened quickly.

'You're very punctual,' said the girl who stood in the doorway. _She's the one. She has that look in her eyes_. The girl was scarcely twenty if that. Her hazel eyes looked out from within a dark swathe of black and silver eye make-up. Her skin was pale and her long black hair tied back in a ponytail, apart from a couple of stray locks of hair that fell down by her temples. She was wearing a tight-fitting long-sleeved black top, a short denim skirt, black tights and knee-high black motorcycle boots. Around her neck she wore a long silver chain. From the chain hung an eye-shaped pendant, wreathed by barbed wire, and on her fingers she wore multiple rings. The eyes were clear and searching, pale halos reflected in them from the light over their head. They stared quizzically at Isaac, assessing him. As to what his reaction to her was, Hermione elected to leave that to him.

'I tend to be,' was his reply.

'Why don't you come in?' She turned away from the door and he followed her in.

The flat was incongruously luxurious in comparison to the bleak stairwell. It had the comfortable and modern decor of a hotel room, save for the crimson walls. There was a king-sized bed, a leather sofa, and a mahogany table with four chairs. The decor was minimal, apart from a bedside lamp, a full-length mirror and in one corner of the room, a bar.

She stood in the centre of the room, apparently looking at the scene before her. Then she turned to him with a flourish.

'So … where do you want me?' she said quickly.

'The table,' he replied.

'What do you want to do there?'

'I want us to talk,' he replied in a low voice.

'I see.'

'You sound a little disappointed, but that can't be right.'

'Maybe I am, maybe I'm not,' she replied.

They sat down opposite one another at the table.

'So you're one of the ones who want to talk …' she said as she sat down.

'Tonight I want to talk,' he replied. 'I suppose you get people like that in here from time to time?'

'Certainly,' she replied.

'Do they want to talk about themselves or about you?' he asked.

'A majority want to talk about themselves, others want to 'get to know me', if you see what I mean. They like to have a more personal relationship. Or perhaps they want to save me. What do you want?'

'A bit of both, I suppose,' he replied.

'You suppose? I won't get my hopes up in that case.'

She sat for a moment, contemplating him with what seemed like a more relaxed air. _She feels in control_.

'Why don't I get you something to drink?' she said, quickly rising up out of her chair.

'Why don't you?'

She went over to the bar and looked under it.

'What do you want?' she asked courteously.

'Just a tonic,' he replied.

'Nothing stronger than that?'

'Not for the moment.'

She opened a small bottle of tonic, the kind normally found in a hotel minibar, and poured it into a tall glass. She brought the glass over and laid it down on the table before him.

'Are you not having anything?'

'I haven't decided what to have yet.'

He waited silently, not touching his drink, as she went back to the bar and poured herself the same drink as his.

As she sat down she glanced with faint amusement at his untouched drink.

'How gentlemanly of you to wait for me.'

'Oh, I don't know about that.'

He waited for her to drink first before reaching out to sip from his drink.

'Not everyone is attentive to a little detail like that,' she said, brushing a strand of hair out of her eyes. 'I think we just got off on the right foot.'

He picked up his glass again.

'In that case, let me drink to us staying on good terms throughout the evening.' This time he raised his glass and took a longer mouthful. Her eyes blinked rapidly in quick succession as she watched him drink. When he put the glass down on the table it was half empty.

'Naturally relaxed,' she remarked. 'I envy you.'

'Oh I'm sure,' he replied in a lower voice.

'You do drink stronger things, I suppose?'

_She could easily find that out if she wanted_, Hermione whispered in the dark, half to herself.

He paused for a moment before replying.

'Oh, I drink, ' he replied nonchalantly. 'I hope I haven't just gone down in your estimation.'

She smiled, and this time the smile lingered a little longer.

'You value my good opinion. I'm touched.'

She glanced for a moment across the room at a spot that was beyond Hermione's sight.

'Since we're just talking at the moment,' she went on, 'I could do with a cigarette. You don't mind, I suppose?'

'Go ahead,' he replied. She stood up and walked to the bar. Her bag lay on the counter. She opened it and took out a packet of cigarettes and a lighter. She returned to the table, sat down and lit a cigarette. She offered him one but he refused. She left the lighter on the table.

'Do you have some problems you'd like to tell me about?' she said in a bright manner. 'I'm quite likely to have some very good advice,' she said, exhaling her first intake of the cigarette. 'People like me often do, don't they?'

'Y_ou_ probably would,' he replied. 'I was going to say something like you're too intelligent for this, but I'll spare you sentiments you've probably heard before.'

She looked at him strangely for a moment, before regaining her composure.

'Sometimes it's convenient to come across as not so intelligent,' she replied quietly. 'Some people prefer it that way.'

'But you didn't think I would.'

She blew smoke away again.

'No, I didn't.'

They looked at each for a moment.

'Shall we run through the schedule for this evening?' she said with an arch look. 'You've booked me for the rest of the night. Are we going to spend the whole night talking?'

'That would be a bit much,' replied Isaac. 'To be honest I don't know how things are going to pan out. Can I start by telling you my name?'

'Your real name, I suppose?'

'Absolutely.'

'Go on then,' she replied, exhaling a cloud of smoke over the table.

'My name is Isaac.'

'It's charming,' she said gaily. 'My name is Severine,' she added in a mock sultry voice. He actually laughed. _Don't think I've ever heard him do that before_. The girl laughed along with him.

'It's nice, though, don't you think?'

He nodded.

'Just the right balance between darkness, exoticism and stereotype.'

'Something like that,' she replied, rolling her eyes.

'Just out of curiosity …,' he began.

'No,' she said, interrupting him. She paused for a moment, eyeing him with a cooler look. _Not right now, she means._

'No problem,' he replied. 'It was a liberty on my part to ask.' She held his gaze, hers still tense.

'Anyway,' she said, breaking off the gaze, her tone more business-like. 'You were saying that you want to talk about me and about you. Why don't we start with you?'

'Fair enough,' he said. 'Ask me a question then.'

'Ok,' she said, sitting back in her chair. 'What are you, Isaac?'

'The way you put the question, you almost seem like you know what the answer is.'

'Oh no, I'm genuinely all curiosity.'

'Ok,' he said. 'I'm a wizard.'

Her eyelids blinked rapidly.

'A conjurer,' she replied in a cold voice that reminded Hermione of someone else. 'What, do you do children's parties and things like that?'

He laid his hand on the table, his open palm facing her. In an instant the lighter was in his hand.

'Not bad,' she replied in the same tone of voice. 'Can you do any more party tricks?' For the first time, Hermione felt a presence, not far from her, probing. Rachel was looking inside.

'_She's looking_,' Hermione whispered.

'What did you see?' he asked, suddenly looking up. She looked at him again, and there was the smallest flicker of apprehension.

'You made the lighter move across the table without touching it,' she replied in an off-hand manner.

'I don't mean there,' he replied. She looked at him again, her eyes wide open. For a while she said nothing. She glanced around the room, as if she was looking for something that would help her. At last she returned his gaze.

'I saw kindness,' she replied softly. 'And sadness. And guilt. Gnawing guilt. The same inside as out.'

'I mean you no harm,' he said, almost inaudibly. 'Don't call for help. There's no need. You're in control of this situation. You decide what happens here tonight.'

She nodded in reply. He leaned in a little closer.

'Tell me how you came to be here, Rachel.'

At the sound of her name she shuddered and seemed to glance around the room, her eyes glassy. After a few moments of silence, she looked back at him, her gaze clearer again.

'I'm here because this is where I was always meant to be,' she said at last, leaning back and pouting slightly.

He continued to look at her intently.

'You'll have to explain how that works,' he replied. His tone was more forceful, less forgiving. She paused again, raising her head slightly, as if listening for something indistinct in the air.

'First of all I want to know something.'

'Ask me.'

'How do you know me? Who sent you to find me? You tell me what you know about me, and then maybe I'll fill in the blanks, if I feel like it. I'll know if you're lying.'

He nodded.

'I take it as a compliment that you didn't feel the need to look until now.'

She narrowed her eyes.

'In spite of the present circumstances, somehow you seem trustworthy,' she replied. 'So how do you know me?'

'We're interested in you because you're interested in us.'

'Who are 'we' in this case?'

'Other wizards and witches.'

A smile started to tease itself out of her mouth.

'Oh you exist, then, do you?'

'We exist all right. And as I said, we're very interested in you.'

'I'm not interested in you,' she replied quickly.

'But _she_ is. She's involved herself in our business.'

'And I'm supposed to be some way of getting at her? How disappointing.'

'I doubt it's that easy.'

She offered a half-smirk in response.

'So tell me about me,' she said finally, folding her arms and looking defiantly at him from across the table.

He leaned back in the chair and straightened his back.

'You were an exemplary pupil. A good daughter. Great things were expected from you, but you fell from grace.'

She seemed to smile, but it was a strange, glazed kind of smile.

'You'll have to be more specific,' she replied, in a gently mocking tone. 'You could be talking about almost anyone.'

'There were three of you,' Isaac continued. 'Caleb Priestley, Justin Pole and Rachel Thirlwell.'

This time there was no visible reaction.

'Shall I go on?'

She took out another cigarette and lit it quickly.

'Why not?'

'Two of you dropped out of school, the other went missing altogether. Apparently for no reason.'

'These things happen,' remarked Rachel drily.

'Certainly,' he replied. 'But it's less common for a teacher to engineer the corruption of her own pupils.'

Her body grew suddenly taut and her gaze went very cold.

'And how might she have done that?' she asked quietly.

'I suppose she thought you were open to her ideas.'

'Weak-willed, I suppose you mean?'

'Not at all.'

'Since you were such a diligent and promising student, you must have been a very interesting target.'

He paused, but Rachel made no response.

'Shall I go on?' he said again.

'I suppose you'd better,' she replied in a clipped tone. He bowed his head slightly and went on.

'Having selected you, she then went about bringing you together, by setting Caleb up to humiliate you in class.'

'Who says he humiliated me?' Rachel interjected.

'You left the classroom in tears.'

Rachel seemed to shake her head at the memory.

'I thanked him for it afterwards. He showed me how naive I was about life.'

Now he leaned in a little closer.

'What was the argument about?'

For a second, Rachel smiled.

'Good deeds lead to bad and bad deeds lead to good. Discuss.'

'That was the subject your teacher had asked you to debate.'

Rachel nodded.

'Oh, I was very active in class debates,' she murmured. 'No matter what the subject was. Always ready to contribute an opinion. Even if I knew nothing.'

'Top of the class,' he murmured bleakly.

'Yes, I was.'

'What happened after that?'

She looked away into space.

'You seem to know so much, why don't you tell me?'

'I want you to tell me. I may not do the story justice.'

She paused again. The cigarette had nearly burned itself out. She took one last drag then stubbed it out.

'It's up to you if you want to answer,' he said, grim resolve in his voice.

'And if I don't want to, will you make me?' She was smiling, but the look in her eyes was cold and glazed.

'I don't have the power.'

'Don't you? You seem rather powerful to me.'

_Guilt drives it_, Hermione couldn't help thinking.

'Does anyone have the power to stop you from speaking to me?' he continued.

A frown was frozen to her lips.

'You know the answer to that one,' she said softly.

'Well, is anyone stopping you now?'

She paused again, her eyes blinking as she seemed to search for something.

'No,' she said at last.

'That must mean you're allowed to answer.'

She tilted her head slightly so that her gaze seemed to be directed past him.

'She came out of the classroom especially. To find me,' she began, her tone cool and neutral. 'She stopped me in the corridor. She was very nice: she calmed me down. Told me I didn't have to come back to the class if I didn't want to. That she would have to report the incident to the headmaster, given how there was a whole classroom of witnesses, but that I shouldn't worry. She said she was proud of the both of us for holding strong convictions and being prepared to argue them in public. She told me to go and sit outside in the sun until I was feeling better.'

'She must have enjoyed that.'

'You don't know her,' Rachel retorted curtly. 'If you really knew her you wouldn't speak about her like that. You don't know what it's like to be noticed by someone like her.'

'You're right,' Isaac replied. 'To her credit, she seems to choose her people very well.'

His answer seemed to placate her a little.

'What happened after that?'

'There's an arboretum in the school grounds,' she went on. 'I went and sat there. After a while Caleb came and sat with me.'

'You didn't mind?'

'I knew by then that I had been stupid. But he apologised anyway, said it had been really childish of him to make such a fuss. He had got so angry because he wanted so much to persuade me to see things from a different perspective. That I was different from all the sheep in the class. That I was the only one worth arguing with. I told him that the more he shouted me down, the more I wanted to believe the proposal was right, but the more I knew I was wrong.'

'How did you know you were wrong?'

'It just sort of became clear to me, even while I was still standing there in class, trying to formulate arguments against him.'

'And that changed your opinion of him right then?'

She sighed, more out of tiredness than anything else.

'I never had a bad opinion about him. The next day everyone was coming up to me telling me how horribly he had acted, how sorry they were that I had had to suffer like that. I pretended that I agreed with them. I was still a coward then. So to begin with we kept our distance.'

'He was an outcast. A loner.'

She nodded.

'People at school said he was going mad. But that didn't matter to him. He enjoyed it.'

'He told you that?'

'It was obvious _to me_. He wanted them to shun him. He wanted them to think they were so much better than him.'

'So it was you, him and Justin.'

'No one else was redeemable.'

'Whose word was that? His? Or hers?'

She didn't answer or didn't hear the question. Her eyes were distant.

'We would meet up in the arboretum. Not many people went there, and it felt like it was sort of our place. Caleb brought Justin with him. Of course, he wasn't like everyone thought he was, either.'

'How was that?'

'They said he was simple. Gullible. Easily led, you said. I suppose you got that from some teacher at my old school.'

'It hardly matters,' Isaac replied. 'So how is Justin really?'

'Honest and direct. The rest were all fakes.'

'And what did you do, the three of you?'

Rachel smiled.

'Hate our classmates and teachers mainly. We would take it in turns to choose a classmate and do a quick character assassination of them — all the reasons why that person was an idiot. It felt bad to do it, but that was the whole point. It didn't matter whether the people we talked about were good or bad, the idea was that it left a bitter taste in your mouth, made you feel really bad.'

He sighed heavily.

'You were in training already.'

Rachel looked at him curiously.

'But without knowing it, I suppose,' he added.

'Training for what?' Rachel asked nonchalantly.

'The Circle.'

She maintained eye contact.

'You should be careful mentioning that,' she said softly. 'You know we're not alone.'

His body went taut.

'She could stop this in an instant,' Rachel continued. His body relaxed a little. Again he leaned a little closer.

'Well then, why doesn't she?'

'She probably finds it entertaining.'

'Well we'd better do our best to keep the entertainment coming.'

She glanced away in the direction of the darkened window. When she looked back his face had come closer to hers.

'And in the end, when you were ripe for plucking, she gathered you in.'

'We went willingly.'

'How did she sell it to you?'

'There was no convincing. It just made sense.'

_He's starting to get angry_.

'How do you sell someone the idea that doing bad is good for you?'

'Try it and see.'

'Oh I've done enough bad things in my life.'

'But when you do them the right way, they purify you.'

He shook his head.

'I may be a wizard, but I've never come across a witch who can twist things the way she can.'

She smiled strangely.

'You wouldn't understand.'

'Not unless I knew her.'

'That's right.'

'I bet she knows me.'

'I'm sure she does.'

'But she didn't give you any warning that I might be coming?'

Her eyes blinked rapidly.

'She probably didn't think it was worth it.'

He paused for a moment, a seemingly perfect silence surrounding him.

'Where is he now, your friend Caleb?'

She looked away. He waited for her to look back at him. After a few moments she returned his gaze, but she seemed not quite to be looking at him.

'Within the circle,' was all she replied. Then she stood up abruptly.

'Excuse me,' she said as she stepped away from the table.

'Of course,' he replied, with a distracted air.

She walked quickly across the room, stopping only to grab her bag from where it lay on a leather armchair by the room's single darkened window. She left the room, letting the door slam behind her. The sound of her boots rang out for a few instants on the tiled floor in the hallway. Then they heard the sound of the bathroom light being switched on.

Isaac sat motionless at the table while Hermione sat tight in the darkness.

It was several minutes before she returned. She slid back into her seat opposite Isaac, a composed, languid smile on her lips. He nodded tautly.

'Shall we talk about you now?' she asked laughingly.

'It's not time yet,' he replied softly.

They looked at each other in silence for a moment.

'Did you start doing that before Caleb disappeared or after?' He began.

The answer took a while to come.

'After. But I had planned to from the very beginning.'

'It was your idea?'

'Yes. No one ever suggested it to me, if that's what you're getting at.'

'Why did you wait then?'

She paused again.

'He didn't think they were powerful enough to drive the Circle. They made you too weak, too susceptible to self-pity. Bound to fail.'

'And you're proving him wrong,' Isaac replied. 'I see no self-pity.'

She looked up at him and examined him in silence.

'Tell me,' she began, 'are you just gathering information, or are you recruiting as well?'

'What could I be recruiting you to?'

'Your side.'

'I'm not at all sure we're on different sides.'

'Where would the fun be if we were all on the same side?' she replied sardonically. 'So, are you trying to recruit me?'

'That would be risky if, like you say, we're being watched. Unless you're going to be allowed to be recruited, of course.'

'I'm no use to you anyway,' she Rachel. ' I'm finished.'

'Fallen from grace,' he murmured.

'If you like,' said Rachel, her tone as soft as his. 'We have to fall in order to rise.'

'So you believe you can rise out of this.'

'That's not how it works.'

'Tell me how it works.'

His gaze so fixed on her that she shifted slightly in her seat, as if to move out of its way.

'You fall and fall, and then when the guilt becomes unbearable you gain a moment of lucidity, but nothing more than a glimpse. Then it's gone, and the excuses begin again. And down you go again, only a bit stronger than before.'

'The guiltier you feel, the more powerful you are,' he replied, his voice bleakly sonorous. 'And what will you be when the end comes? Justified?'

'A dead drug addict prostitute I suppose,' she replied. Her voice was defiant but the pain was visible on her face. 'Nothing more and nothing less. But I'll go into the darkness with my eyes open.'

His gaze pierced hers.

'What ascetic lives you lead,' he said finally. 'And the only light is this dark lucidity.'

'That's a nice way of putting it,' she replied, holding his gaze. 'We are the opposite of light.'

'You shut yourselves off from it, which is the greatest acknowledgement that it exists.'

'We're not shut off from it.' Her voice was soft, yet distant. 'We stand in full sight of it. That's what makes it all the more excruciating.'

He looked upwards for a moment and took a deep breath. Then he looked back into her eyes.

'Which pain is worse?' he began, in an almost affable tone. 'Pain that's self-inflicted or the pain of those who suffer because of our actions?'

She seemed to shudder slightly before replying.

'Without the second, the first would be nothing. There would be nothing to feel guilty about.'

'Quite so,' he replied. His voice was bright, almost buoyant for an instant. Then it hardened and darkened again. 'But I ask again: which is worse, the safe, familiar pain of remorse, or the raw, uncontrollable pain of the helpless?'

She said nothing, but her eyes stared wider. As Hermione watched, the vision before her seemed to become stretched and taut.

'You seem to know all about guilt,' said Rachel finally.

He seemed to draw closer to her.

'Yes, I know all about it,' he replied, his voice strained. 'Or I thought I did. But what in my glib despair I called guilt was really just a show I put on for myself behind closed doors. The consequences of my actions were conveniently kept away from me, hidden by a wall of self-pity. But then I tasted it: the pain of another. And then at last I knew what guilt was.'

There was another pause, and all around her Hermione felt a kind of interference, almost like a burst of static or white noise.

'How?' asked Rachel, her voice barely audible.

'I can show it to you too,' he continued, his voice suddenly soft and coaxing. 'What guilt really looks like.'

The sensation grew acuter. It reminded Hermione of an insect in its death throes. _What is it that he wants to show her?_ Whatever it was, it was time for the show to begin in earnest. He reached into his pocket and took out the bottle of black liquid. Without hesitation, he uncorked the bottle and drank a mouthful of the liquid. He handed the bottle to Rachel without speaking. Fear flickered across her face again.

'I don't need to drink this to look inside,' she said in a low voice.

'Drink it for me,' he replied, almost gently.

She took the bottle and drank.


	42. The vigilance of Hermione Granger - Ch20

20\. The pain of others

As Hermione looked, she could see Isaac's memories and emotions gradually emerge from a dark blur, reconfiguring themselves, taking physical form. Colours pulsed, lights shattered into tiny balls and shadows raced up the walls that were coming into focus around them. A bedroom with scuffed, pale green walls, cheap rented furniture, a glaring light bulb with no lampshade protruding from the ceiling. Two figures were standing in the room, a man and a woman, their faces gradually forming from shadow. Isaac Edwards was one, only much younger, in his 20s perhaps, his face free of the perpetual dourness that haunted him in the waking world. The woman she had never seen before. She was as young as Isaac, gentle-faced, wavy blonde hair tied back in a ponytail, her eyes magnified by wide-rimmed glasses. In her green sweater and brown corduroys, she had a sensible air about her. She held a wand in her hand, looking Isaac straight in the eyes as they stood a few feet apart from one another. He too had his wand in his hand. She still wasn't quite used to seeing him with a wand.

The scene was complete before Hermione, and she knew it must also be the same for Rachel. She understood her role. She had to make sure that Rachel couldn't escape the scene, or be released from it. She had to see what Isaac wanted to show her. And Hermione had to close the door, lock Rachel into the picture.

Now the younger Isaac held up his wand, half pointed at the girl and half off into space. Keeping her eyes fixed on him, the girl raised her wand in the same way, mirroring him.

'Ready?' he asked in a gentle voice.

A look of fear flashed across her face, but after a moment she nodded. He moved the position of his wand so that it pointed at her face, at a point on her forehead between the eyes. Swiftly she did the same. He began to murmur an incantation, indistinctly at first so that the words couldn't be made out. She took up the incantation, softly at first then more clearly.

'_You are the night to which I am opening_.'

Their lips moved in perfect synchronisation, their eyes locked together like lovers. Now light began to leak from the wands and gush into their foreheads, as if there were holes there. After a few moments the streams of light burst at a single point from the backs of their heads then curved downwards, drawing an arc around their necks, weaving them together, then spiralling ever downwards, crossing and pulling a sinew of light around and around their bodies. When the interlocking lines reached the ground they began to rise, now spiralling up and drawing new lines around them, the process continuing until their bodies were hidden by a palimpsest of light.

In the next scene they lay outstretched on the bed in the same room. Their faces were pallid and their movements sluggish and drained of energy. Isaac reached out his hand, touched the girl on her cheek and gently moved her face round so that she was looking at him across the bed.

'Was it what you expected?' he asked gently.

She didn't answer to begin with, or couldn't. Her eyes struggled to focus on his, moving jerkily in their sockets, the pupils bleached of their colour.

'Kirsten,' he said more firmly, as if she couldn't hear him. 'Did you hear what I said?

Finally she seemed to see him.

'I never want to leave,' she replied, softly but plaintively. Then she looked away.

Time after time the scene repeated itself, always in the same room, first the two of them standing in front of each other and casting the spell, then sprawled on the bed, coming down from its effects. Sometimes they spoke to each other, in little fragmented conversations that grew more and more incoherent. Sometimes they kissed languidly and fell asleep. Other times he would be restless, getting up and pacing the room or looking distractedly out of the window. One time he tried for minutes on end to wake her, collapsing onto the bed next to her when he finally succeeded. And over time, always growing in his mind, was the need to break free of that place, and the hope, ever fainter, that he could take her with him too.

'Why do you make it stop?' she said to him reproachfully, her head lolling against his shoulder. 'Don't let it stop … There's nothing for us out here.'

Once again they stood in front of each other in that same room. An indeterminate length of time had elapsed. They were emaciated, dishevelled, their eyes glazed. She looked as if she could barely stand up, but her hand didn't tremble as she raised her wand to his face. Slowly he followed her. Pain was visible in her eyes as she looked into his.

'Isaac,' she said. 'Don't mourn for me.'

The lines of light moved faster than ever before around them and they were soon lost in the light, the faintest outline of their embracing bodies visible from within. Suddenly the perspective seemed to change, and the onlookers were no longer onlookers, but themselves enclosed within the cocoon of light. Her cold cheek rested against his, her eyes closed, her arms loosely gripping the nape of his neck. Then the light started to crack and dissipate, the dark of the waking world starting to invade, to claim them. _It's never happened this way. Something's wrong._ His pulse went suddenly arrhythmic, throbbing in his throat. Then the light was all gone and they were in his room again. _That hated room_. She wasn't in his arms anymore. He looked around the room and its sickly green walls, bare as always. He looked down. She was crumpled on the floor, all the light gone from her, her skin yellow grey. He kneeled by her side, holding her hand, remembering even to check for a pulse. It was still there. But her eyes didn't open, she didn't react to him calling her name, apart from once maybe, when her head seemed to stir. _Too late_. He could hear her pulse in his head, slower and fainter. He squeezed her hand, looked helplessly at her face and began to count. Counted the beating of her heart. The last few beats. Close to fifty he had counted when he knew that very few remained. He leaned down and kissed her on the cheek, at least to catch her in life one last time. Then the count stopped.

He began to speak but his words fell silent. The scene began to fall apart, as if the film it was running on had begun to rupture. The walls and ceiling cracked and suddenly the open sky stretched out above them, red and glowering.

_No more_, said a voice in Hermione's ear. She knew it was Lillian's.

A cool wind was blowing, whipping through Hermione's hair. The land around her was all rubble and overgrown weeds. The earth was twisted and lopsided, as if after a landslide. Downed cables and tangled wires were strewn all over the ground, poking out of wild growths of weeds and coiled around collapsed buildings, seemingly connected to nothing and leading to nowhere.

Up ahead of her, through the tangle of tall grass, wires, dried mud and rubble, a figure was running, slipping on debris and running across the blasted terrain, heading towards an unknown destination. _Rachel._ For a moment Hermione glanced back behind her. Down the hill, surrounded by a wasteland of neglect, stood a small slate-roofed and brick-fronted house. It looked like an ordinary terraced house that had been detached from its neighbours and dropped down in the middle of a wasteland. _Isaac's house_. _The house where Kirsten died_.

She went as quickly as she could across the shattered landscape, glancing around her in the red silence, trying to catch up with Rachel. She passed a series of twisted ridges and dank, tangled hollows until she came to a place that she sensed marked an ending. She hesitated before the invisible boundary, looking out over the uncertain terrain beyond. _Where are you running to? It's not a good idea to run around out here unprotected. Who knows who might see you._ In the distance she could see the small, dark figure crossing the wasteland. _Think, Hermione. Down here you don't need to run_.

The next moment she was right in the girl's thoughts, the ground in front of her heaving up and down as she ran forward into the dark. She didn't seem to notice Hermione's presence, or at least gave no sign that she did. _I'm free. I'm free,_ Rachel kept saying to herself. _Now all I want to do is run_. Out here she was going to find him. This was where he wandered, out in the wasteland.

Suddenly in the distance something came looming out of the red darkness, growing bigger and bigger with every moment as Rachel ran tirelessly onward. At first it seemed like the outline of a mountain rising up out of the shattered plain into the red sky, but its sides and cupola were too regular, too precise to be anything other than man made. _He's here_, she could hear Rachel saying to herself in elation. She ran towards the great gate of the great building, its towering dome looking down over what seemed like a great expanse of nothingness. Only it wasn't nothing: the building felt connected to everything and everyone. It saw everything and everyone. It saw Rachel as she ran to the gate; it saw Hermione carried along in the girl's thoughts. As Rachel pushed open the tall, carved wooden gate, for an instant Hermione considered bailing out, but a new thought that presented itself made her stay. _Lillian is afraid to come here_.

Still Rachel ran, now down a long aisle lined on either side with towering bookshelves, the great cupola high above her head. 'Where are you?' she suddenly shouted out into the silence, her voice echoing around the endless rows of shelves. Suddenly she stopped, slightly out of breath, her head bowed down. There was blood on the floor, an ugly puddle of blood on the stone floor, a smear leading away from it down the aisle. Now Rachel was running again, following the splashes of blood, veering round a corner onto a perpendicular but identical corridor. Far up ahead a solitary figure was staggering forward, a trail of blood dripping in its wake. 'Caleb!' Rachel shouted. The figure kept advancing slowly but now every moment she was gaining on him. 'Caleb!' she shouted again. At last he stopped and turned. Hermione knew his face from the class photo. He was handsome, but his face was white and there was a deadness in his eyes. In his hand he held a bloody knife and his trousers were saturated with blood. 'It's no use,' he said, his words not obviously directed at her. 'I still can't feel it.' 'I can,' said Rachel, the exhilaration clear in her voice. 'Caleb, I've felt it tonight. All it takes is the slightest shift in perspective. Our own pain is so weak. It's nothing. It's gone in an instant, annihilated by the pain of the other.'

_Helpless before the pain of the other_. The words spelled out by the incantation came back to Hermione, and for the first time they seemed to make sense. But suddenly the scene began to fade into a dark, blurred distance, disintegrating and reconfiguring itself again. It was as if Hermione was being prised from the scene. _I'm waking up_.

* * *

Hermione woke with her head and arms sprawled on the kitchen table. Her neck felt twisted and stiff and she slowly lifted it, her head reeling and her heart pounding.

'So you want to feel the pain of another?' said a voice. Ginny Weasley stood in the doorway of the kitchen, a black look on her face. Hermione swayed to her feet and took half a dozen faltering steps towards her.

'I know who you are,' she said coolly.

'I suppose you would. You're getting so good at this now,' replied the figure who still spoke with Ginny's voice and wore Ginny's shape. 'But you understand why I'm here as Ginny, don't you?'

'Yes,' said Hermione. 'To parody what happened to Rachel tonight.'

'There's no parody, Hermione,' said the figure. 'I just wanted you to enjoy the kind of insight that Rachel experienced.'

The woman who looked like Ginny shot out her hand and grabbed hold of Hermione.

'Are you willing to see what Ginny sees?'

Hermione made no attempt to resist.

'Where shall I begin?' she continued. 'There are so many places.'

The kitchen disappeared. In its place was the memory of Ginny ascending a staircase. Hermione recognised it straight away as the staircase in Grimmauld Place, the one that led up to the top floor. Ginny stepped onto the landing and pushed open the door that led into the attic room at the top of the house. Harry was standing in the middle of the room, wand in hand. Little streaks of light burst from the end of it then began to chase each other round in small circles in the air. For a few moments they seemed to weave themselves together before splitting apart and shooting off into different corners of the room.

'What are you doing?' said Ginny. Her tone was curious, but contented. _I was happy then. I thought he was too. Things were getting close to normality. Or they seemed to be._

'Oh, just experimenting,' said Harry, lowering his wand. 'I want to see

what wands can do, other than the usual things we learned in school or were forced to use out there.' His expression darkened for a moment: the memories of the Battle of Hogwarts were still too fresh then.

'Why don't you come downstairs?' she said, putting her hand on his shoulder.

'I will in a little while,' he replied, a little distracted.

_Now I know what he was doing up there_, said Ginny's voice. _He worked there for weeks on end, making your present. He gave me presents of course, but not like the one he gave to you._

Now they were outside, in the woods not far from the Burrow. Ginny was walking alongside Ron. 'How did they get so far ahead?' he was saying. 'Ah, there they are,' he said, pointing to two figures standing close together under a tree. _Look at him touching you on the arm. He was down that day. What were you telling him to make him feel better? Why was it that you knew what to say and I didn't? I spent so much of my time in these woods when I was growing up_. _Harry and I walked here loads of times too._ _This is my place, not yours_.

Now it was just Ginny and Harry, in their bedroom at the flat they lived in after Grimmauld Place. Harry was stretched out on the bed, reading a book. Ginny came in and jumped up on the bed next to him. 'What are you reading?' He looked up from the book, which had a stray piece of paper half-pressed between the pages like a bookmark, only not at the page at which it was open. 'Oh, it's about animism in Siberia,' he replied. 'Oh right,' said Ginny. 'Where did you get that from?' 'Err … Hermione lent it to me.'

_I didn't like the fact that you lent him a book. But I told myself that I wasn't being fair. There was no need to be so possessive, so jealous. But my instinct was right. Every little gesture of yours was an attempt to encroach on my territory, to influence him, to prise him away from me. _

Now the scene was at a party, a bizarre party thrown years earlier by Luna at her father's place. Ginny pushed through the crowd, looking for Harry. Finally she found him, standing on the party's fringes, talking in a low voice to Hermione. His face was clouded with worry; she was looking up into his eyes, touching him on the arm. _There you go again, reassuring him, soothing him. Your hand touching him. In what world do you think it's your place to do that? You smug, traitorous whore. If I had a knife I'd cut those delicate little fingers of yours clean off._

Or at the Burrow, a bunch of them sitting round in the living room. Ginny looked around at Harry, in time to see him exchange a look of quiet complicity with Hermione. _I could go on all night with all the little scenes and moments I've witnessed between you and him over the years. But nothing can compare with the other night. How he leaped up to save you, ready to give up everything for you. And the look of triumph on your face! I'll never get over that. I never knew just how far you have him wrapped around your finger._ _You've won,_ _Hermione, you've got him now. What do you plan to do with him now? Ruin him like you've ruined yourself? Good luck to you. To be honest, if it all ends in disaster, I won't mind_.

When Hermione opened her eyes she was sprawled on the kitchen floor. She pulled herself up onto her side and looked up. The figure in Ginny's form still stood there, a look of bitter satisfaction on her face.

'How was that?' she asked in a cool voice.

'Excruciating, but all true,' Hermione replied bleakly.

'Do you see things more clearly now?'

'I suppose so.'

'Has it made you stronger?'

Her limbs aching, Hermione dragged herself to her feet.

'Yes. It has. I think I could do you some serious damage now.'

Ginny's mouth curled into a smile.

'Haven't you done enough harm to me already?'

'I'll make you take off that mask first,' Hermione replied.

'No you won't.'

'Won't I?'

'You're good, but not that good. No, Hermione, if you want to lash out then it's this face you'll be hurting. Will you enjoy it? If you manage to really hurt Ginny, properly maim her, you might actually feel bad enough to really take me on. Only thing is, what will Harry say when he sees you fantasising about torturing Ginny? Do you really want to test his loyalty to you that much?'

Hermione looked at the ground then back at the figure before her. _So clever of you, Lillian, as always._

'Take off the mask and we'll talk.'

The next instant Lillian stood before her.

'Aren't you going to congratulate me?' said Hermione.

'Oh yes, congratulations,' Lillian replied. 'You managed to create an opening in the circle. Feel free to apply whenever you like.'

'No thanks,' said Hermione with a smirk. 'But I thought you'd be more pleased. I thought you liked challenges. I thought you liked it when I outdid you. Or are you worried you'll lose?'

Lillian's eyes burned coldly.

'I'm not worried about losing, Hermione,' she said after a few moments. 'I'm destined to lose and you're destined to win. It's just that I have to make sure that you win the right battle.'

'Is that another puzzle for me to work out?'

'Something like that. But I'll be helping you, don't worry.'

Hermione looked at her insouciantly.

'Was there anything else?'

Lillian smiled.

'One little thing. While you were off frolicking in the wasteland, you were neglecting poor Harry. I'd go and pay him a visit if I were you.'

Hermione felt her throat go dry.

'You understand,' she said slowly and deliberately, her gaze fixed on Lillian, 'depending on what I find, I may have to come and kill you after all.'

A vaguely melancholy look drifted across Lillian's face.

'That wouldn't be such a bad thing. But you should remember, if you provoke me, I have to respond.'

Hermione eyed her coldly.

'It must be terrible to be you,' she said.

'It is,' whispered Lillian. There was no triumph on her face.

* * *

In an instant Hermione was in the flat above Armin's shop. The spare room where Harry slept was plunged in darkness. _Lumos_, she said in a loud, agitated voice and flashed her wand through the air, casting light on a broad sweep of the darkened room, first at chest height, then lower. The lower sweep soon revealed a limp body sprawled on the floor by the far wall.

'Harry!' she shouted, pouncing on his prostrate form and rolling him over onto his back. His eyes were open and seemingly staring at a distant point, his hands covered with blood. She quickly reached for his wrist and located his pulse, which was there. Then she tried to shake him awake, the blood on his hands smearing on her clothes.

'Harry, wake up!' she shouted. Her next thought was to locate the wound. It wasn't hard to find: his t-shirt was torn at the chest and drenched with blood. She pulled up his t-shirt and whispered healing charms over and over, until the horizontal wound on his chest closed up and once again resembled an old scar.

By now Harry was half-awake and groaning, rolling his head from side to side.

'Harry!' Hermione shouted again, looking for a sign of recognition in his eyes. But the eyes seemed to search in the dark for another.

'Leave me alone …' he murmured.

'Harry, what's wrong?' said Hermione, his change of mood at seeing her suddenly affecting her more than his injuries.

'I'm sorry,' he continued in the same distracted tone. 'So sorry … I don't deserve to live.'

He broke from her gaze and looked limply at the wall. She turned and followed his gaze then held up the wand light.

Bloody writing was dripping down the wall. It read:

_Nothing worse than a traitor_.

At the foot of the wall lay a jagged, blood-stained shard of glass. Hermione understood that it had been used to reopen the wound in his chest and write the words on the wall.

'What happened?' she asked, although she already had a pretty good idea.

'Mum's right,' Harry groaned. 'I am a traitor.'

Hermione began to understand the scenario that had been played out for him. Perhaps one of Lillian's helpers had been sent on this particular mission. Or more likely Lillian herself had twisted time to come and torment Harry personally. She felt lightheaded and vaguely nauseous. Then she threw off the sensation.

'Harry,' she shouted, laying her hand on the side of his face, searching for his gaze. 'I'm responsible for this. If anyone should be punished, it's me.'

She reached out for the shard of glass and put it back in his hand. _Do it, Harry, if you want. I won't mind. It might even make me feel a bit better._ His hand gripped the glass, as if he meant to use it, but then he let it fall out of his hand. The shard cracked in two as it hit the floor. His expression seemed to clear. She even thought she could make out the vaguest of smiles.

'Covered in blood again,' he said at last in a deadpan voice. She let out a nervous laugh of relief.

Blood was all around them: on the floor, on the wall and on their bodies, faces and hands. She pulled herself upright and stumbled forward, broken glass crunching under the soles of her shoes. She reached back for Harry then half-hauled him onto his feet. He switched the main light on and they looked around at the blood-splattered room and the bloody message daubed on the wall.

Harry raised his wand to erase it, but Hermione put her arm out to stop him.

'It is true, Harry,' she said. 'And I really am sorry.'

'Don't worry,' he replied. This time he erased the message.

'I didn't think she could get to me,' he said.

'It's alright.'

'I was just sitting here. Waiting for something to happen I suppose. Then it did. My mother was here. Here in this room. But she seemed so angry. I've never seen her angry. The look on her face was terrifying. She said she was so disappointed in me. She never thought me capable of betrayal.'

Hermione found it hard to look him in the eye. She looked down at his hand and saw that it was shaking as he spoke.

'I was stupid.'

'No, you weren't.'

They quickly went about cleaning away the blood from the rest of the room then sat down on the bed.

'Is Armin …?' Hermione began.

'No,' said Harry.

'Maybe it's for the best.'

'Yeah, otherwise he might think I'm a rather deranged house guest.'

For a moment their laughter echoed round the room.

'We got one of hers tonight,' said Hermione.

'What do you mean?'

'We freed her from Lillian, I think. But so much has been happening I haven't even had a chance to try and find out the consequences.'

'What else has been happening?'

She replayed some of the night's highlights in her mind.

'I'll tell you everything,' she said. 'Just not right now.' She took hold of Harry's hand and clasped it tightly. 'But after tonight, there's one thing I've decided.'

'What's that?' said Harry. She looked at him and smiled.

'From now on you and I have to stick together. No matter what.'


	43. The vigilance of Hermione Granger - Ch21

21\. The last gate

'What was that place you saw anyway?'

Hermione looked across the table, first at Harry, then at Isaac Edwards.

She and Harry had left the flat above Armin's shop together, leaving a note to explain Harry's sudden departure. Isaac Edwards was waiting for them at the cottage.

'I think it was some sort of library.'

She recalled the aisle Rachel passed down, lined with bookshelves from floor to ceiling.

'And the missing boy, Caleb Priestley, he's in there?' said Isaac.

'I think so,' Hermione replied.

'And Rachel is there too now?' Isaac seemed more emotional than usual. _He feels real concern for that girl_.

'And what about Lillian Herrick?'

'She never entered the building. Either she was unwilling or unable.'

'That's an interesting development,' said Isaac.

'Yes,' said Hermione. 'I think she might be safe from Lillian in there.'

'Is there a way of going back and getting her out?' asked Harry.

'I'm not sure,' said Hermione. 'She certainly went in willingly. I wonder whether she would be able to leave of her own accord.'

She looked again at Harry and Isaac. Their eyes were red from lack of sleep and she imagined she looked the same, if not worse. Dawn was approaching, but who could think of sleep?

'Did you ever come across something about a library, or some sort of repository, in all the texts you studied on the Seven-Pointed Circle?' asked Harry.

'I've been racking my brain, trying to remember,' she replied. 'There were maybe some vague hints, but they could easily be misinterpretations.'

The idea of going back there filled her with dread, she realised.

'I don't suppose you stopped to glance at any of the titles,' Harry remarked.

'I didn't have the chance,' Hermione replied. 'But one thing I do remember: they all looked the same.'

'Like they had the same binding?' said Isaac.

'Yes.'

'Or, like they were all volumes of the same book?' Harry suggested.

'The same book...' Hermione repeated, a light going on in her eyes. 'Harry, thank you!'

Suddenly she started to pace up and down the draughty kitchen, muttering under her breath, as if she were trying to remember words she had learned. After about a minute, she stopped pacing and turned to them.

'_The dark will not hide you, nor will the light,_' she said, reciting the words she had remembered. '_With every deed, every thought, the book writes itself._ It is a repository, Harry. A repository of every thought and deed. The quotation comes from a late commentary, seventeenth century if I remember correctly, by an author called Donatus Poorwill. I didn't think of the commentary at first; I was searching for a more direct source.'

'So whose thoughts and deeds are kept in this book?' asked Harry. 'Just those who master the Circle, or everyone's?'

'Everyone's, Harry, everyone's. Be sure of it,' said Isaac gravely.

Harry and Hermione stared at him. His normally stoic facade seemed to be cracking.

'The memory you showed to Rachel,' Hermione began, 'was so powerful that it overwhelmed both Rachel and Lillian.'

Isaac almost smiled.

'I knew I'd have to tell you about it,' he replied. 'Do you know what the circular incantation is?'.

'I've heard of it,' Harry said, glancing quickly at Hermione. 'From a book you once lent me. That book of yours called it a kind of dark magic.'

'The book exaggerated,' Hermione replied, smiling at Harry.

'It's not dark magic,' Isaac explained. 'At least insofar as it's not intended to do harm to others. But it's dangerous. Because it's so seductive.'

He explained his fascination as a young man with trying the incantation, how since it required two people to perform he had convinced a colleague, a young witch called Kirsten, to try it with him.

'I convinced her, charmed her into trying it,' he explained, his face ashen and his hands shaking. 'I didn't even know her that well. Or not to begin with, anyway. It took control of her completely.'

'And it killed her,' murmured Hermione, the scene from the room coming back to her. Particularly the dreadful pallor on the girl's face as her heart stopped beating.

'Yes, it killed her,' Isaac replied, his gaze rooted to the floor. 'In a way I can never leave that moment. In fact I'm condemned to relive it, over and over again. I dread the day when I see her again, but long for it at the same time. I can never make amends, never be forgiven, never even ask for forgiveness.'

He stared across the table and off into space, a look on his face as if he had just watched her die again. Hermione wanted to try and comfort him. But it was hopeless. Still, she had to say something.

'The incantation,' she began. '_You are the night to which I am opening._ It's almost like an echo of the incantations used to enter the Circle. The similarity never occurred to me before.'

'Could be a coincidence,' Isaac replied. 'Or it could be that there are ways in which our magic draws on other magics.'

'I've never come across the idea of a link before,' said Hermione.

'But why not?' Harry exclaimed. 'Who says that our magic and other types aren't just parts of the same magic?'

'Yes, why not?' Hermione remarked. 'That would be something to look into.'

'You should write a book about it,' Harry replied. 'Once all this is over.'

Hermione smiled.

'Maybe I will,' she said softly. 'If we ever get that far.'

The silence was adding to their feeling of unease. Any sound outside the window or inside the cottage made them startle.

'After tonight,' Harry began, 'what's Lillian Herrick going to do?'

'You mean more than she already did this evening?' Hermione replied, the image of Harry sprawled on the floor in Armin's flat beneath the message written in blood rushing back into her mind.

'I wouldn't be surprised,' said Isaac, 'if she were to move faster against the wizarding world.'

A loud noise behind them in the kitchen made them all whirl around, their wands out in an instant. The leather document case that Isaac had brought with him had fallen off the chair. The three of them lowered their wands.

'Is that all?' Hermione remarked.

'Wait a moment,' said Isaac, starting towards the document case where it lay on the floor. 'Look there.'

The zipper was moving slowly of its own accord, gradually opening the case. They raised their wands again.

'Is this our magic or hers?' said Harry.

'It's the Circle,' Hermione replied in a distant voice, not taking her eyes off the zipper. Suddenly the case flew open and a London A to Z detached itself from an inner pouch and swayed across the room, before coming to rest on the kitchen table.

'Will it be cursed, do you think?' asked Harry.

'If it's Circle magic, then Hermione I think you will have to try and deal with it,' said Isaac.

'Yes, I will,' Hermione replied' her voice cool and distant. She was already halfway through the incantations.

Once inside, she walked calmly to the kitchen table and picked up the book and started to leaf quickly through the pages. She stopped on a page in central London. A miniature rendering of the Seven-Pointed Circle was marked in the vicinity of St Pancras station. Hermione laughed quietly to herself.

'Hermione, what is it?' She heard Harry's voice as if through water.

'It's the British Library,' she said. 'I think it must be Rachel.' A red line emerged from the Circle and began to move along Euston Road, past Kings Cross and onto Grays Inn Road. It was as if someone was drawing a line in red biro on the map. The red line moved swiftly, swerving left at Chancery Lane tube station onto High Holborn, then right onto Fetter Lane, now following the route along which Hermione and Demelza had once followed James Black: left onto Fleet Street, under the tower of St Bride's, but then continuing to Ludgate Circus and onto New Bridge Street, heading for the Thames. The red line came to a point just in front of Blackfriars Station, right on the river bank. There the Seven-Pointed Circle drew itself again. Hermione stepped back out of the Circle and turned to Harry and Isaac, a little smile on her face.

'She's drawn us a map,' she said.

'Who? Lillian Herrick?' asked Isaac.

'No, Rachel has.'

* * *

An early morning train was rolling into Blackfriars Station on the railway bridge across the Thames. Hermione, Harry and Isaac stood on Blackfriars Bridge, looking back at the north bank of the river, searching for the exact spot where the Circle had been drawn. For the second time in the space of a few hours, Hermione had found herself scribbling a note, this time to Caius, explaining her absence and half-suggesting that he follow them to 'somewhere near the Ministry'. Her hunch was that the drawing on the map had something to do with the final gate, and she had a sneaking suspicion that it would lead right into the Ministry.

'What are the chances this is a trap?' said Isaac.

'Reasonably high,' Hermione replied.

'Look down there,' said Harry suddenly, pointing to a small green space overlooking the river. Standing by an empty bench stood the figure of a young woman with dark hair.

'It's Rachel,' said Hermione. 'Or at least it's someone in her image.'

The figure who looked like Rachel looked up, quickly perceiving their presence. She gave them a brief wave, but didn't move from where she was standing.

'Let's go,' said Hermione. They descended the steps to the Embankment. The smell of the traffic fumes was already strong. The girl followed them silently with her gaze until they reached the little riverside garden. She was wearing a long dark overcoat and jeans and now had dark-rimmed glasses, just as Hermione remembered her from the school photo Isaac had shown her.

'You've no reason to trust me, of course,' she said plainly, pulling the overcoat more tightly around her.

She looked around at them, her eyes still seemingly focused on some far distant point.

'I'm not sure we've got the luxury of worrying about that at the moment,' Hermione replied.

'Possibly not.'

'You were able to leave the repository,' Hermione continued.

'It's not the sort of place you ever leave,' came the reply.

'But you're going to help us?' said Hermione. 'Why?'

The girl looked at Isaac.

'In return for the gift he gave me.'

'Don't you fear what Lillian might do to you?'

'No, because by helping you I'm not going against her.'

'I see,' said Hermione. 'Or at least I think I do.'

'You're very clever, Hermione,' said Rachel, 'but you're also too close to this now.'

'I know,' Hermione replied.

'You want to see the final gate,' Rachel replied. 'In fact you need to see it. And Lillian wants you to see it.'

'You speak as if she foresaw all this,' said Hermione.

'That's not impossible,' said Rachel. 'So by helping you my conscience is clear, in a manner of speaking.'

'Does that mean you'll go back to her?'

The girl shivered and shook her head.

'I just want to be with my friends.'

'Is that possible?'

'No.'

She looked bleakly at Harry and Hermione, looking much like the shy and studious teenager she had once been.

'By the way,' she added, 'this doesn't mean that you can stop what's going to happen from happening.'

'Honestly,' Hermione replied, 'I'm not sure we can either.'

They looked at each other grimly. A smile broke out on Harry's face.

'Still, that's never stopped us before.'

They leaned over the side of the embankment and looked down into the mass of grey water below.

'This is called the Dowgate,' said Rachel. 'If you look down there you can see the way in.' she continued, pointing down at a kind of opening at the bottom of the embankment where a little current of water coalesced with the main flow of the river.

'Is it some sort of sluice gate?' Hermione asked.

'Yes, it's where one of London's underground rivers flows out into the Thames,' Rachel explained.

They set off down slippery grey steps that led towards the water.

'We're not going to have to swim to the Ministry of Magic?' Harry remarked.

The steps ended at a narrow stone platform, just a few feet above the point where the water lapped against the embankment. Next to the platform, directly above where the current of water flowed into the Thames, was a metal grating about the size of a person.

'Have wizards ever used this route to get in and out of the Ministry?' Hermione asked.

'I'd say probably not,' Isaac replied. 'But who knows?'

'Whether or not it was used I don't know,' Rachel replied. 'But wizards knew about it. They put enchantments inside to hide the way into your Ministry.'

'Do we need to cast a spell to open the grating?' said Hermione.

'Try just opening it,' replied Rachel.

Hermione paused for a moment, then reached sideways and put her hand on the grating. It was cold and slimy. She looked back, slightly unsure of her balance. Harry shifted a little on the platform and took hold of her waist to steady her. She smiled at him and turned back to the grate. This time she pushed on the grating, and found that it swung open far more easily than she had expected. She shivered as a cold breeze that seemed both damp and stale wafted out of the opening.

'Looks muggle-made to me,' Isaac remarked.

'Who wants to go first?' Hermione asked.

'I will,' said Harry. 'The water's not much more than a trickle.'

He looked down and jumped off the ledge, landing on the threshold of the opening and grabbed the wall to steady himself.

'It's ok,' he called out.

Hermione made the jump next, followed by Isaac and Rachel.

'You were right,' said Isaac to Rachel as they headed into the tunnel, walking on its sides to avoid the channel of water flowing in the middle. 'Charms were cast here, at some point in the past. Only the magic has faded.'

'And no one will be watching from the Ministry end,' added Harry, 'since the Ministry probably no longer has any record of this place.'

They advanced by the light of three wands. Harry in the lead, followed by Hermione, then Rachel, with Isaac bringing up the rear. In places the air grew denser and smelled of what seemed like cordite.

'That must be what's left of the protective spells,' remarked Isaac from the rear. The tunnel bent left and right, perhaps avoiding obstacles that lay deep in the ground below London.

Finally, after another bend, the tunnel opened out into a wider space. The fog of spent enchantments was thicker still and the bare stone walls of the tunnel glistened eerily. Harry made his wand cast more light: the tunnel came to an end in a blank wall. They all turned to Rachel. She looked at the blank wall and said calmly:

'This isn't the end of the tunnel.'

'Really?' said Hermione, going up to the wall. She ran her hand over the rough stone surface.

'You're right!' she exclaimed suddenly. 'This is a false wall. Do you see the markings?'

She traced a line on the wall in a broad circle, then a series of shorter lines bisecting it at different angles.

'Now do you see it?' she said.

A large circle intersected with seven lines was now visible on the wall.

'Has this been put here to block our path?' said Harry.

'Quite probably,' Rachel replied.

Harry turned to Hermione.

'When you say this is a false wall, do you mean it's an illusion?'

'It's not exactly an illusion,' said Hermione, touching the wall again. 'It's a real wall, only one that was made using the Circle.'

Harry ran his hand over it.

'It certainly seems real enough. I suppose if I try and put my fist through it, I'll just break my hand.'

Hermione put her hand on his to stop him.

'Yes, you would.'

'The problem is we have to get through here somehow,' said Isaac.

'Yes' said Hermione. 'And I suppose it was put here for our benefit.' She turned to Rachel.

'Are we close to the opening, do you think?'

Rachel nodded.

'We're close to the other door.'

They all stared at the blank wall in front of them, which seemed as solid as if it was carved out of the rock around them.

'We're assuming that this is some kind of trick,' said Harry. 'But it could be a double bluff. We could just blast it away with a spell, only we don't dare to. And maybe that's the point: Lillian Herrick could be out there laughing at us as we stand in front of a wall doing nothing.'

'She would enjoy that,' said Hermione. 'But I think the joke would wear thin a bit too quickly for her liking.'

'The other possibility,' said Rachel, 'is that you're supposed to break down the wall.'

'What did you say?' said Hermione, turning to her.

'That the idea is to break down the wall,' Rachel repeated, in the same nonchalant voice.

Hermione hugged her suddenly.

'Rachel, you really are on our side after all.'

'What do you mean?'

'I think that's it: we're meant to break down the wall. And by doing so, _break down the wall_. I bet that this wall has been put up like a kind of screen to cover the real door. If we break down this wall, we break the door too. Making us the ones responsible for opening the door between the magical and non-magical worlds.'

'In other words, doing Lillian Herrick's job for her,' said Harry.

'Oh, she'd love that,' commented Hermione as she paced back and forth in front of the wall.

'Thing is,' said Isaac. 'If you're right, and I think you are, what are we supposed to do? We can't just sit here and guard this place, any more than we can guard the other openings. And we would have to search the entire Ministry for the opening on the other side, and that could take a very long time. I don't think anyone even knows how far the Ministry really extends.'

'That's true,' said Hermione, nodding sadly.

'There's something else,' remarked Harry, who had returned to the wall and was running his hand over it, 'with this false wall here, we've no way of knowing whether the real gate has already been opened or not.'

'And if that's the case,' said Hermione, joining him at the wall, 'she could already be inside, or anyone else that she cared to let through. That would be another fine trick for her to play on us, to have us sitting around in front of a gate that's already been opened.'

'Hermione,' Harry asked, 'could you look around the wall without breaking it down?'

Hermione smiled.

'Using the Circle, you mean.'

She glanced across at Rachel. Rachel nodded then walked slowly towards the false wall, looking up at the lines of the circle etched there. She reached up and placed her hand at the centre of the circle.

'Since this wall was made under the red sky,' she said, turning to Hermione and speaking in a low voice, as if her words were intended only for her. 'We need to look at it under the red sky too.'

The two of them took a step back from the wall and closed their eyes, whispering the incantations under their breath in unison.

The false wall stood in front of them as before, only Harry and Isaac were no longer standing next to them. Rachel glanced at her and shot her a fleeting smile.

They went up to the wall. It looked just as solid as the real one. Hermione put her hand on it.

'It feels the same.'

'It is at the moment. We just need to roll back time a little.'

'You make it sound so easy.'

'You just have to move it, like any other object.'

They positioned themselves on either side of the circle on the wall, focusing on a spot in the lower half of the circle, more or less at their eye level. To begin with nothing happened. The passing of time in reverse, if that was what was happening, was imperceptible. Suddenly a small beetle could be seen scuttling across the wall, only it was moving backwards. More time of unknown duration passed, until suddenly the carved circle erased itself line by line from the wall. Then the wall simply ceased to stand in front of them. A chill breath of wind escaped from within.

Before them was an opening where the wall had previously been. The stone tunnel continued for a few more feet only, before it reached a rusted metal doorway. The doorway hung open, revealing an extremely dusty, long-abandoned corridor of the Ministry, which led away into the distance. The corridor was lit by witch light. As she looked down the corridor, Hermione could make out footprints in the dust on the floor, possibly made by more than one person.

'We've seen enough,' she said.

Rachel nodded. Hermione looked once more through the opening. Then she let go of the image before her. As she did so, time seemed to reel back into place and the wall reappeared.

'It's been opened,' said Hermione, as soon as Harry and Isaac were back before them. 'The way into the Ministry is open.'

'Could you see where?' asked Isaac.

Hermione shook her head.

'Could be anywhere, but somewhere down in the catacombs I should think.'

'When?'

'Recently I suppose.'

'Did someone go in?'

'It looks like it. Possibly more than one.'

'Could they still be in there?'

'Who knows?'

'Shall we try and follow them?' said Harry.

'I wouldn't if I were you,' said Rachel.

'Why not?' said Hermione.

'This was meant to be the trigger,' she replied.

'The trigger?'

'The wheels are in motion,' she added. 'The magic that hides your Ministry will have been breached.'

'Surely the charms hiding the Ministry are too powerful to be breached just like that?' said Harry. 'Think about all the protection guarding Hogwarts.'

'They are powerful,' said Isaac. 'But these outer burrowings of the Ministry are only partially still part of it, and so the charms aren't as strong. And while they can easily keep the non-magical world at bay, who knows how they'd fare against the otherly-magical?'

'Put it this way,' said Rachel. 'I wouldn't risk getting stuck inside now.'

'But the people inside need to be warned!' Hermione exclaimed.

'Hermione, wait,' said Isaac, reaching out his hand to stop her. 'What are people going to do if they see you and I running around the Ministry shouting '_everybody out! the witchfinders are coming!_'

'Point taken,' Hermione replied, her enthusiasm deflating in an instant. 'So what do we do?'

'I don't suppose there's any way of resealing the opening?' said Harry.

'Even if we could do it,' replied Isaac. 'The Separation is probably too weak. You would block one hole and another ten would appear.'

'But if the Ministry's been exposed,' Harry continued, 'does that mean it'll now be somehow … visible to the world?'


	44. The vigilance of Hermione Granger - Ch22

22\. Fulfilment of a promise

They re-emerged on a narrow side street a safe distance from the riverside gate, in case the entrance was already guarded. Harry slipped out to check the surrounding area while the others waited in the alley. From their hiding place they could neither hear nor see anything unusual above the distant roar of traffic. The street, which remained empty apart from them, seemed enveloped in an eerie quiet.

'Is it really possible that the Ministry's visible now?' said Hermione as she paced back and forward on a short section of the street.

'And if it is,' said Isaac, 'will our magic be detectable now?'

'I hadn't thought of that,' said Hermione.

'They will have a playbook in preparation for today,' Isaac replied. 'And their wizards will have a checklist of specific things to do. For example, if the Ministry is going to be exposed, they will probably want to try and seal it magically. Another thing for them to do will be to

use magical detection to keep tabs on other wizards in the Ministry and around it. And if they're really forward-thinking, they'll want permanent magical detection, over as wide an area as possible.'

'How wide do you mean?' said Hermione.

'The whole country.'

'Can they do that?'

He looked grimly at her.

'The trace for underage wizards covers the whole country. How hard can it be to have something like the trace, but for all wizards?'

'Not that hard,' Hermione replied. 'The Death Eaters were pretty good at having magical detection all over the place too.'

Isaac nodded.

'I remember.'

After a few minutes Harry returned.

'I've been as far as the Monument. Nothing unusual on Cannon Street and Upper Thames Street.'

Hermione sighed in relief, but Harry went on.

'But when I was up by the Monument, I noticed something strange: the ground felt like it was moving. Only very slightly, but it was noticeable. Particularly to me, because I was on the lookout for anything unusual, but I also saw quite a few people stop suddenly in the street and pause, as if they were listening out for something. Most people were walking about oblivious though, so I couldn't be sure.'

They stood still for a moment, trying to detect any movement in the earth. Beneath the incessant vibration of traffic and the rumbling of nearby trains, there was a very distant sound and a vibration of a different kind, as if from the grinding of metal against rock. It seemed to come from below, from beneath the streets and the traffic and train tunnels. Whatever it was seemed to be rising.

'Something is happening,' said Isaac.

'Something's moving underground,' said Hermione. 'Something very big by the sound of it.'

Harry looked down hard at the ground beneath their feet. The rumbling seemed to be growing louder, and the vibrations multiplying. Then he looked up at Hermione, his eyes wide.

'Do you mean what I think you mean?' he said.

Hermione returned his gaze and nodded.

'The Ministry is rising to the surface.'

They looked at each other in silence.

'London's going to look a bit different after this,' remarked Isaac.

'I have a question,' said Harry. 'Why would the Ministry rise to the surface anyway?'

'It's a fair question,' Isaac replied. 'And I can only speculate as to an answer. Consider that the Ministry has been constantly growing under the streets of London as more and more has been added to it over the centuries, and is even present at the surface via its many entrances, which are woven into the fabric of London's built landscape. Because of all this, it exerts a kind of pressure on what lies above it and adjacent to it: tube tunnels, cellars, pipes and the rest. And given all this, the enchantments in place on the Ministry have to do two things: keep it concealed of course, but also alleviate the pressure it exerts on what lies around it. I could be wrong, of course, but that's why it might rise to the surface.'

'Why does nobody ever mention this at the Ministry?' replied Harry.

'How often does the Auror Office discuss building maintenance?' asked Hermione by way of a reply.

'I see what you mean,' Harry replied.

'Whatever the reason,' Isaac added. 'You can bet that Mr Morley and his friends will be the first ones at the door.'

'What's more, what's going to happen to everyone who's inside the Ministry?' said Hermione. 'There must be thousands of people in there.'

'We have to warn them,' said Harry, who was already halfway down the street when Hermione called him back.

'Harry, wait!'

'What is it?' he said.

'Why don't we … well just try phoning someone?' Hermione replied.

'Who do you want to phone?' said Harry. 'Ron doesn't have one.'

'Yes, despite his infatuation with muggle gadgets, he never got one,' Hermione murmured, her mobile phone already pressed against her ear.

'It's ringing,' she announced. 'Demelza? Are you in the Ministry right now? Has anyone raised the alarm about a security leak? Well, have you noticed anything strange? Like what? Well like the entire Ministry rising up out of the ground? I'm serious. Deadly serious. Something very big is about to happen, I think. Or if it doesn't then I'm insane so there's nothing to worry about. You have to get out of the Ministry now, while you still can. But first, if you can, go and tell Ron and Mr Weasley that the gates are open and the witch-hunters are coming. If they don't believe you, tell them I'm begging them just to check. Then if nothing happens they can have the satisfaction of knowing I've lost the plot. Ok? Umm … I don't know where exactly, somewhere near a Ministry entrance.'

'If the Ministry's really going to come to the surface, we're going to have to try and defend it somehow,' said Harry in Hermione's other ear. 'We'll need as many people as we can get in front of it. If it even has a front, that is.'

'We'll be outnumbered,' said Hermione.

Harry shot her a brief smile.

'Of course we will.'

As soon as they emerged from the alleyway, the first signs that things were not exactly normal were evident straight away. More and more people were stopping in the street, listening to the faint rumbling coming from below. One man in a suit was even crouching down on the ground, his ear turned to the pavement. The streets were filling up as people came out of their offices to investigate the vibrations.

They made their way through the swelling crowds, making for the nearest Ministry entrance, wondering if it would still be hidden when they got there. On their way they heard the word 'earthquake' several times. Near St Paul's the crowds were larger and more agitated. There the talk wasn't of earthquakes, but of 'something unnatural'. They cut through the back streets, avoiding the main avenues, which were increasingly swarming with crowds, now interspersed with police. As they emerged out of one alley, they heard a man's voice clearly pronounce the word 'witchcraft', making everyone turn their heads nervously. A street away from a Ministry entrance they found their way blocked by a police cordon holding back a rapidly swelling crowd. Suddenly Hermione grabbed Harry's arm and whispered 'I just saw one of the witchfinders!' Harry passed the message on to the others, and they quickly ducked down a quieter side street. Here, the incessant rumbling was stronger than ever, and they all had the distinct feeling that the ground was shifting, buildings and all.

'It's on its way,' Isaac muttered, nervously scanning the pavement.

A group of twenty or thirty people ran past in the street beyond.

'How long before we see it?' said Harry, craning his neck in the direction of the crowd.

'Not long, I reckon,' replied Hermione.

'How many people are there in your Ministry?' asked Rachel.

'It's not my Ministry,' replied Isaac. 'But there are a lot of people in there.'

'There's scarcely a wizarding family in the country that doesn't have at least one person working there,' remarked Hermione. She paused and looked round bleakly. 'We all have friends and family inside.'

'Do you think they're doing anything down there?' asked Harry.

'It's hard to say,' said Isaac. 'Who's going to believe a couple of people running around the Ministry saying there's been a security leak of apocalyptic proportions, if no one knows where the leak is? Up here we can feel the rumbling. Inside maybe they can't feel anything.'

Hermione had her mobile phone out again.

'Ginny?' she shouted. 'Don't hang up! This is an emergency! You've spoken to Ron? Can you see anything? Nothing? You can't feel that the Ministry's about to pop out into the middle of London? I'm serious. Get out of the Ministry now.'

'Before they seal the exits,' added Isaac over Hermione's shoulder.

'What did you say? I can't hear you very well.'

The line was starting to break up.

'Look, how much does it cost you just to go outside for a minute? Pretend you're going for a cigarette.'

Then the connection was lost altogether.

'Maybe they've started,' said Isaac grimly.

'If they're sealed in, we need more help from outside,' said Harry. 'Do you have Caius's number?'

'Good idea!' said Hermione, leaping on her phone again. 'I suppose this still works … Caius, it's Hermione. It's happening. We're outside the Ministry. The streets are full of people and the witchfinders are about. Ok, see you in a minute.'

She looked up.

'He's summoning the Coven. They'll be here in a minute, I hope.'

Just as she finished speaking, a deafening noise rent the air and a wave of pure force swept down the street, buffeting them and almost pushing them over. Once the wave had passed they rushed forward, out past the end of the street. A vast open expanse twice the size of Trafalgar Square had opened up in the middle of central London. The maze of office buildings that just a few minutes had been just across the street were now visible over on the far side of the square. The vast new square was black and shiny and seemed to emit a black, baleful light. The crowds writhed and shouted behind police cordons. Just in front of the police cordon, they could make out a group of people they recognised as Mr Morley and his closest associates. Mr Morley had a megaphone in his hand and was trying to broadcast a message to the crowd, only a part of which was listening to him. He had a look of almost crazed excitement about him. From where Hermione was standing, his message was mostly unintelligible. But she managed to catch one significant fraction of it.

'… Today we have been proved right. For years we have been saying that magic is real, but deliberately kept hidden from us. And today a den of witches is being raised to the surface, emerging into the streets of London right before your eyes, a black growth right in the heart of this great country!'

'Oh no, not this idiot again,' remarked a voice suddenly at Hermione's side. It was Caius Hanmer, together with Meredith Dulse, Serena and the rest of the Coven of the White Tooth. The sudden arrival of 13 people dressed in black robes caused a disturbance in the crowd, which surged around them, trying to back away.

'What are you looking at?' shouted Caius in a loud voice. Then, suddenly, the crowd turned away, their gaze transfixed by the vast black square that spread out in front of them. The smooth black expanse was now bulging and swelling. At first there was just a protuberance about ten feet across out in the centre of the square, but soon the swelling spread to every corner. In the space of a few minutes, the protuberance had grown to the height of a two-storey house. And it was still growing. As the black mass began to tower into the sky above the heads of the crowd, Mr Morley looked on silently in satisfaction, occasionally whispering to his associates. The mass stopped rising when it had reached about six storeys into the sky. Then its smooth dark exterior began to develop contours, grooves and hard edges, until standing in the middle of the square was a sprawling complex of buildings of varying heights, all shrouded in a sinister black light.

'So that's what it looks like above ground,' said Harry.

'Why is it covered in this black light?' asked Hermione.

'I don't know,' Isaac replied. 'Maybe it's the magical protection of the Ministry leaking out into the atmosphere.'

A hush fell over the crowd as it contemplated the Ministry of Magic, silent and swathed in black.

'What next?' said Caius.

'I don't know,' said Hermione, turning to Isaac. 'Do you think the new vow wizards will try to seal the building to stop anyone getting out?'

'That's exactly what I expect them to try and do,' he replied.

'We need to find them then,' said Harry.

'The first thing would be to get through this crowd,' Caius added.

'That's just the problem.' replied Hermione. 'We need to get to the other side of the crowd, but then we'll be the ones surrounded. We'd have to blast our way out.'

'True, but we're going to have to start using these things at some point,' said Caius, revealing his wand, which was poking out of his sleeve.

'Caius is right,' said Harry. 'We're actually going to have to start using spells on muggles at some point.'

'I know,' said Hermione. 'But even if we just stun them, it would still look like we're killing them. We might trigger a full-scale riot.'

'Looking at some of the blokes in the crowd, I'd say that's precisely what they came down here for,' remarked Caius, pointing to a group of well-built and intimidating men standing not far from Mr Morley.

'Mr Morley's rent-a-mob,' Isaac remarked.

'They've got a kind of Friday night in the town centre air about them,' commented Caius.

'Yes, but I think they've got a bit more in mind than a drunken brawl at closing time,' Isaac replied.

Just then, Harry felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned brusquely, his hand on his wand and his body tensed in readiness for confrontation.

'You won't be needing that just yet,' said a familiar voice. It was Argenta Coyle, with Demelza standing right next to her.

'Argenta! Demelza! You made it out!' exclaimed Hermione.

'I wasn't in the Ministry when it all started kicking off,' said Argenta. 'I was busy trailing the Goodwins. They were out furniture shopping, bless them, when they got the call from Morley that the gates were open. I've been looking for you ever since. But first Demelza found me. I reckon she must have been one of the last to get out of the Ministry.'

'I feel bad about leaving everyone behind in there,' said Demelza, staring up at the Ministry. 'I tried to tell as many people as I could. But virtually no one believed me.'

'That's no surprise, sadly,' said Isaac.

'I managed to speak to Ron Weasley and Mr Weasley through,' Demelza continued. 'Ron didn't want to believe me at first, but the more he thought about it, the more he began to think there might be something to it. He told me to go and find you. He said he would gather together as many people as he could, and that we should meet outside. So I jumped into the flue.'

'It was still working then,' said Hermione.

'Yes, but it was a much rougher ride than usual. I almost passed out. It spewed me out on the pavement on an alleyway somewhere round here. That's where Argenta found me.'

'I was on Carter Lane when Demelza jumped out at me from Wardrobe Place,' Argenta confirmed.

'Fell out of Wardrobe Place, more like,' Demelza remarked.

'They may have blocked the flue entrances to the Ministry,' said Isaac.

'How is everyone else going to get out?' said Demelza, looking fearfully around the group.

'I'm not sure,' Isaac replied. 'And even if the witchfinder's wizards aren't doing the blocking themselves, the sheer displacement of the Ministry building may mean that the usual ways of entering and exiting it won't work.'

'Oh my goodness,' said Demelza, 'All those poor people inside.'

'Demelza, you did everything you could,' said Hermione, putting her arm around her. 'Thanks to you, they at least had some warning, and some people at least are taking action.'

Suddenly, Isaac interrupted them.

'Look over there,' he said, pointing out across the square to the darkened Ministry building. As they looked, they could make out a single light shining at ground floor level.

'Is that a way in? Or a way out?' asked Harry.

'Quite possibly both.'

They continued to stare at the point of light, which slowly widened, until it was visible enough for more and more of the crowd to notice it. Suddenly a tall man stepped out of the crowd and strode across the square in the direction of the light.

'It's Skelton,' said Isaac. 'He obviously thinks it's an opening. He's going to close it.'

'That might be the last way out of the Ministry,' said Hermione.

'It could well be.'

'Time for magic to come out into the open,' said Harry suddenly. He was already pushing his way through the crowd in the direction of Skelton. Meanwhile, the point of light was getting wider.

'Harry wait!' Hermione called out. He paused for a moment and looked back at her.

'You're not going without me this time,' she said, and started off after him. He turned and smiled, following her every step with his gaze and reaching out his hand to her once she got near. She grabbed it and together they pushed their way through the crowd.

Skelton had already covered half the distance to the source of the light when Harry and Hermione emerged from the crowd and stepped out onto the sprawling black expanse in front of the Ministry.

'Hey wizard!' Harry called out. He felt a hundred pairs of eyes on him in an instant.

Skelton kept walking. All the time, the light was growing.

'Skelton!' he shouted again. This time, Skelton stopped and looked over his shoulder. Harry took his wand out of his pocket and pointed it at him, glancing sideways at Hermione. She stood silently next to Harry, her wand also pointed at Skelton.

'What are you doing with that?' Skelton called out in a mocking, nonchalant tone. 'Are you a wizard or something?'

'Why don't you get your wand out, Skelton?' Harry shouted in reply, his arm still outstretched. 'Let everyone see what you can do.'

'Someone will be along to deal with you in a minute,' replied Skelton. 'And as for you,' he said, turning towards Hermione, 'you must be very stupid to expose yourself in public like this. You might be the first witch to burn in London for a few hundred years. Now, if you'll excuse me.' He began to turn back.

'Well if that's true,' said Hermione in an even voice, her eyes shining darkly, 'I've got nothing to lose. I may as well take you down with me.'

'I'd start praying for forgiveness if I were you,' replied Skelton. Harry and Hermione heard the sound of footsteps approaching from their right. 'And sooner rather than later.'

'I will,' replied Hermione in the same even tone. ''I'll begin my repentance right after I deal with you.'

Skelton looked from Hermione to Harry and then at the crowd behind them. He glanced repeatedly to his left, and seemed to make some impatient gestures in that direction.

'Skelton, you're a wizard and we all know it,' Harry continued in a loud voice. 'We even went to the same school,' he called out, addressing the crowd behind him. 'A school of witchcraft and wizardry.' Catcalls and shouts of anger could be heard from the crowd behind him. Somebody launched a missile from the crowd, which flew over Harry and Hermione's heads and landed not far from where Skelton was standing.

'He's the wizard, not me!' Skelton shouted at the crowd. His tone was no longer nonchalant.

'You've got a choice, Skelton,' Harry cried. 'Either you take out your wand and fight me like a true wizard, or you keep pretending and I'll shoot you down anyway.'

Skelton seemed to lean forward for a moment then paused again. He looked at the crowd watching from behind where Harry and Hermione stood. Then he glanced to his left. At last he reached in his pocket. Before he could take out his wand, Harry and Hermione both fired stunning blasts from their wands, and he crumpled to the floor. Then the crowd exploded, surging forward from behind Harry and Hermione and simultaneously from their right. Harry and Hermione were engulfed by the crowd in an instant and surrounded, but as they turned they found that the hands laid on them were those of Caius and Isaac, who had surged forward a moment ahead of the mob. Now the Coven of the White Tooth had formed a cordon around them, firing warning shots from their wands over the heads of the crowd to drive it back. But as Harry and Hermione turned back towards the Ministry, where the point of light was still growing, they found their way blocked again, this time by Stephen Morley himself, Chloe Goodwin and a group of aggressive looking men.

'Take a good look at them!' shouted the Witchfinder. 'Here are your valiant wizards and witches. They've barely crawled out of the ground and they're already attacking the innocent!'

Harry and Hermione looked at the growing light and then at one another.

'The public relations effort is going to have to wait a bit,' said Hermione.

'What do you reckon?' asked Harry. 'Alohomora times one hundred?'

'Something like that,' Hermione replied, a grin leaking onto her face.

They turned and raised their wands high over their heads, firing off twin blasts that arched over the Witch-hunters and coalesced with the light coming from the Ministry. The Witchfinder urged the mob forward, and the men began to ran towards Harry and Hermione. At the same time, Isaac, Argenta, Demelza and the Coven stepped forward, their wands raised. The men hesitated and the two sides stared each other down in the square. Then the silence was broken by a new voice.

'Oi, tosser!'

Ron Weasley stood in front of the dark Ministry building, light spilling from the hole around him. Alongside him were Ginny, Percy, Mr Weasley and a handful of other Ministry wizards, including Kingsley Shacklebolt himself, his face a mixture of shock and hardened defiance. Vantricia Bellu, his assistant, was at his side.

'Are you talking to me or to him?' shouted Harry at Ron.

'Both of you I suppose,' came Ron's withering reply.

Mr Morley turned angrily towards the Ministry. Then he turned to Chloe Goodwin.

'Close that hole, now!' he shouted.

Chloe Goodwin drew out her wand, and began firing at the group in front of the Ministry, who parried every shot. She paused and another standoff began.

'We're going to have to join forces, you know,' called out Hermione to Ron.

'I said we'd be there if anything ever happened,' shouted Ron. 'And here we are. We're true to our word, unlike some people.'

'Well done, do you want your medal now or should it be awarded posthumously?' shouted Hermione in return.

'Feeling pleased with yourself?' Ron continued unabated. 'I can see the self-satisfied smirk on your face from here. I'd know that look anywhere, I've seen it a million times!'

'Ron, if you don't shut up I'm going to send you back down that hole into the Ministry!' shouted Harry. Mr Morley and the crowd were for the moment transfixed, trying to comprehend the apparent disharmony in the wizards' ranks.

'Sticking up for your girlfriend are you?' said Ron, shifting his wand so that it was angled right in Harry's face. 'I never did get the chance to give you what's coming to you.'

'Well, why don't you right now?' replied Harry, pointing his wand at Ron.

'Sorry to interrupt, but I don't think we're really very interested in your sordid little menage-à-trois,' shouted Mr Morley, suddenly regaining his focus. 'But maybe we can find a cell for the three of you to share!' Chloe Goodwin was the first to react. She smiled as she fired a series of shots at Kingsley Shacklebolt, which he only just managed to parry.

'We need to get to where Ron and the others are,' Hermione called out. The others nodded. The next moment they all disappeared, even Rachel, before reappearing next to Kingsley and the Weasleys, just in front of the Ministry. Immediately they turned and put up a magical barrier to stop the witch-hunters or the crowd in general from coming any closer. Almost immediately the barrier came under attack.

'Before we say anything else,' began Hermione, looking at the tense faces before her, 'please can we call a truce until we get out of this situation?'

They paused for a moment. Then Ron nodded. Hermione glanced at Ginny. To her surprise, Ginny returned the glance.

'Yes, we should,' said Ginny, a clear-eyed, cordial look. _I don't deserve it_.

'We owe you that much.'

Hermione could see Ginny's eyes shift to look at Harry. She couldn't bear seeing what his expression was.

'Thanks,' said Harry gently. The look of composure on Ginny's face trembled but remained intact.

'It's a waste of time us being here if we don't work together,' said Harry.

'You're right about that,' Ron replied.

They looked around. The witch-hunters and the crowd behind them were visible through the semi-opaque magical barrier. Hermione turned quickly to Ron.

'Is there anyone else trying to get out of the Ministry?'

'I don't know,' said Ron, looking back and squinting into the light behind him. 'I think I heard voices behind us somewhere.'

'If you're inside, you can't tell what's going on,' Ginny added quickly. 'We only found out that something was interfering with the Ministry when we tried to get out and found the doors blocked.'

'I tried to make an announcement,' said Kingsley, stepping forward. 'But it was as if nobody could hear me.'

'Hello?' suddenly they heard a voice emanating from the source of light. Harry stepped into the light and looked down. Through the light he could make out a face, although not one he recognised.

'Hello,' he replied. 'Are you trying to get out?'

'Yes,' replied the wizard. 'Can you help us?'

'Are there more of you?' said Harry.

'A few. What's going on up there? Something weird's happening, but we can't tell what it is.'

'Take a look for yourself,' said Kingsley.

The wizard's eyes widened in amazement as he looked out at the vast square and up at the façade of the Ministry now framed against the sky.

'How is this possible?'

'No time to explain,' said Harry. He and Kingsley reached down and took hold of the wizard's hands. In a moment they pulled him up out of the Ministry and he came tumbling out onto the black square.

'Thanks,' said the wizard, pulling himself to his feet and sticking out his hand. 'Vladimir Strang. Broom testing and type approval.'

'No time for that now,' said Harry. 'Let's get the others out too.'

'Hello?' came a woman's voice from the light-infused hole. 'Is somebody there?'

'Absolutely!' Harry called out, reaching down into the hole. A delicate hand with sculpted nails, rings and an ornate silver bracelet reached out from the light.

'Are you there, Minister?' came Myra Tremayne's voice.

'Yes, Myra, I'm up here,' Kingsley replied stiffly. 'We've got a bit of a situation here.'

They pulled her up out of the hole and for a few moments she seemed to lose the power of speech altogether, her mouth opening and closing as she looked out over the square.

'It happened,' said Kingsley. 'What we were warned about has happened.'

Myra looked at Kingsley then across at Harry and Hermione.

'Well then,' she said, rediscovering her voice. 'We'd better do something about it.' She reached into her patent leather bag and pulled out her wand, a look of determination on her face.

In the space of a few minutes, another dozen Ministry wizards and witches who had gathered around the exit had been pulled out into the square. The cordon was still holding, although it was beginning to crack and fray.

'What's the plan?' Caius called out from the cordon. 'We can't hold them for much longer!'

'If they break through we'll be overwhelmed,' said Mr Weasley.

'I'm staying here,' said Kingsley. 'It's my responsibility to stand and fight, whatever happens.'

'I'm not going anywhere either,' said Myra Tremayne firmly.

'Good for you, Myra,' said Kingsley.

'But what are we hoping to achieve after all?' said Percy Weasley. 'The Ministry's right here in the middle of London! By now the whole world's watching us!' he said, waving his hand in the direction of the crowd, which writhed back and forward behind the cordon. Police sirens filled the air and above them they could hear the sound of helicopters flying overhead, circling the Ministry building.

'What do you expect me to do?' said Kingsley 'Just slip away into the night? I have a responsibility to the people who are still inside.'

'They'll have the army here in a minute,' said Isaac. 'This could turn into a riot.'

Kingsley looked out at the chaos in front of him.

'The rest of you should all go,' he said. 'I'll stay here. I don't care if they arrest me. I'm the Minister, the buck stops with me. I'm not worried about the police or the army.'

'The safest thing in the circumstances would be for the police and the army to secure the scene before anyone gets killed,' said Hermione. 'But we need to draw off the new vow wizards. Then in the meantime hopefully as many people as possible can escape from the Ministry.'

'Whoever escapes here will need a place to rendezvous,' said Isaac. 'Somewhere they can get to before the witch hunters put up their own magical barrier.'

'What do you mean?' asked Percy.

'They will want to track all wizards in the Ministry and around it,' said Hermione. 'And if they manage, it will mean that anyone doing magic around here will be traceable to them.'

'Including if you try and apparate straight out here,' added Argenta.

'But where should we head for?' said Harry.

'I have an idea,' said Isaac. 'Look up there.'

He pointed in the direction of a run-down 1970s office block that rose up into the sky, surrounded by a cluster of older, lower buildings.

'That's Muirton Tower,' he continued. 'It's due to be knocked down soon. The building's already empty above the third floor.'

'Are you suggesting the Ministry relocates there?' said Percy Weasley, a hint of disgust in his voice.

'Not exactly,' replied Isaac. 'Apart from being mostly empty, the building has one key advantage for us.'

'What's that?' said Ron.

'Its height,' said Isaac.

'Why is that helpful?' Ron asked. 'Apart from the fact that we'd have a nice view of this fiasco.'

'Because the enchantment will start from the ground and move gradually upwards,' said Argenta. 'The top floors of the building should stay above the magical barrier for longer.'

'If there is a magical barrier at all,' remarked Ron.

'There will be a barrier,' said Isaac firmly. 'Or at least there will be an attempt to put one up. That's why the tower would be a good temporary base for us.'

'Wrapping an enchantment around a magical object the size of the Ministry isn't something you can do in five minutes,' Kingsley added.

'And it'll take plenty of wizards to do it,' Argenta remarked. 'They're probably getting into position around it as we speak.'

'Well then, we need to slow them down,' said Harry.

'That means we'll have to split up,' said Hermione. 'Some of us need to go and look for wizards raising an enchantment around us.'

'I reckon I can find them,' said Rachel in a quiet voice, speaking for the first time.

'You think so?' said Hermione.

'Oh yes. And I could probably distract them as well.'

'That would be great. Isaac, you should go with her. You have the best idea of how the enchantment would be put in place.'

Isaac nodded.

'Hermione,' said Kingsley, 'you suggested drawing attention away from this opening, so as many people as possible at least have a chance to escape. Why don't you and a few others take care of that?'

'Ok,' said Hermione.

She looked up at the darkened Ministry building behind them. The sheer complexity of the building was overwhelming. Walls rose in every direction and at a multitude of different heights and angles. The building was like a giant black spider crouching in the square, stone tentacles arching into the sky and coiled around at ground level.

'The Ministry can still help us,' she remarked, pointing up at the facade. 'We can play hide and seek up there for hours.'

'And if Mr Morley sees _you_ up there,' Harry remarked, scowling up at the battlements, 'he's sure to want to send people after you.'

'That's probably true,' said Hermione.

'Sounds like fun,' Ron remarked.

'Got a better idea?' she asked coolly.

'No,' he replied. 'So we'd best get on with it.'

Kingsley looked up to address the gathered wizards.

'Did you all hear where to go when we've finished here?'

The wizards nodded their acknowledgement.

'Don't apparate straight in there,' Hermione added. 'Take a roundabout route.'

Their own magical barrier was still holding, but was under repeated fire from curses and projectiles hurled from the crowd.

'Ron,' said Harry. 'You coming up?'

Ron glanced up at the Ministry building.

'Yeah, but I'll go my own way, thanks.'

'Suit yourself,' Harry replied. 'Caius, what about you and your lot?'

'Count us in,' said Caius.

Hermione turned back to the Ministry building and looked down the opening that led inside.

'What are we going to do about this opening? I'm worried the witch hunters are going to use it to go inside the Ministry. At the same time the last thing we should be doing is trying to block it. There are hundreds of people still inside.'

'Well, can we conceal it?' said Kingsley.

'That's a good idea,' said Hermione. 'But what with?'

'This, of course,' said Ron, stepping forward, the Deluminator in his hand.

'Good thinking!' said Hermione. 'Would you care to do the honours?'

He nodded, shooting her a sidelong glance. Then he opened the Deluminator and the light in the opening disappeared inside.

'Like I was saying,' said Kingsley. 'I'm going to stay here and keep this entrance open.'

'And I will go back down into the opening, to see if I can show the way to other wizards still inside,' said Vantricia Bellu.

'Are you sure, Vantricia?' asked Kingsley.

'Quite sure,' she replied.

'Our magical barrier isn't going to hold all that long,' said Caius.

'We'll make another one,' said Myra Tremayne.

'It'll take a few of us to keep the barrier in place,' said Kingsley.

'We can help with that,' came a voice from just across the barrier. 'If you're willing to fight alongside us.' When they looked in the direction the voice had come from, they could see that around another twenty or so wizards had apparated into the square, just next to the Ministry building. The wizards carried a banner with them, which bore the symbol of the Citadel movement. The wizard holding the banner was Tobias Destrument. He stood among the other wizards who had been imprisoned in Azkaban, flanked by his sister, Enid Blackledge, and his grandfather, Gondulph Belhaine.

'What do you say, Minister?' said Belhaine, his wand in hand and a thin smile on his lips. 'If ever there was a day when wizards put aside their differences, it's today.'

'You want me to stand and fight next to the man who tried to kill me?' said Kingsley, pointing at Silas Lashburn.

'It was nothing personal,' replied Lashburn.

Kingsley looked at the wizards on his side of the barrier then back at the wizards of the Citadel.

'For today at least we put aside our differences.'


	45. The vigilance of Hermione Granger - Ch23

23\. The barrel of the gun

The dark façade of the Ministry rose in a maze of towers, crenellations and platforms, the result of hundreds of years of enchantment-guided underground expansion beneath the streets of London.

At a pre-arranged signal, the wizards disapparated from down in the square, reappearing at scattered points all over the Ministry complex. Kingsley Shacklebolt, Myra Tremayne remained down below, guarding the opening to the Ministry alongside Gondulph Belhaine and the Citadel wizards. The magical barrier protecting them from the crowd was rapidly falling apart, making the creation of a new one a necessity. Edmund Glimlatch, until that morning a prisoner in Azkaban, proved to be particularly adept at magical protection, and set quickly to work.

Thirty wizards and witches stood scattered along the Ministry's myriad roofs, ledges and pavements. They looked around, trying to locate one another and survey their positions: seen from above, it was as if the Ministry had spread its black stone tentacles over the streets of central London. Beyond the main hulk of the building, countless appendages had carved new avenues through London's streets, shunting buildings both new and old into new locations.

From where Hermione was standing, she could see the extent of the streets displaced by the raising of the Ministry, and the line of buildings that had been pushed back into the foreground. There was a clear line of division between the darkness that enveloped the Ministry, contaminating even the sky above it, and the daytime that continued unabated in the rest of the city. When she looked down from her ledge some four floors up, she could see that the crowd in the square and the surrounding streets had grown much bigger. Part of the crowd was held behind fortified police cordons, but another part swarmed around the Ministry building at surface level. Some seemed to be searching for a way in, others milling about chaotically, battling with each other or taunting riot police. Smoke rose from the streets, the crowd roared and sirens wailed. _They can certainly build a mob quickly_.

Mr Morley was standing not far from the Ministry building, watching coolly as a section of the crowd rushed in a wave against its hard, magically reinforced wall. Hermione dropped down to a narrower ledge a couple of floors above the crowd.

'Are you having fun?' she called out in a pleasant voice. He looked up at her and the array of wizards further up the battlements.

'Everything is working out perfectly,' he shouted in reply.

'They'll never get in that way, your little minions,' she replied.

He scowled momentarily.

'But sooner or later we will get in. The cat is well and truly out of the bag. Your secret society is finished. You will all be brought to justice. You especially.'

'Well, you'll have to catch me first,' Hermione replied. 'And it would be a shame to let me get away.' She shifted her foot and a little piece of masonry dislodged itself from the wall and dropped to the ground below, nearly hitting Mr Morley on the shoulder. He stepped away at the last instant then looked up and made a throat slitting gesture to her with his hand, grinning silently as he did so. He quickly spoke with Chloe Goodwin, who was standing next to him. Hermione twisted her head around, looking up the façade. Harry was higher up, some way off to the left. He had seen what was happening. He nodded to Hermione then looked across and gave the same nod to Meredith Dulse, who stood about a floor up from him. The next moment the wizards of the new vow started disapparating from the square below and reappearing themselves on the Ministry. _Just as we planned_. In unison the Ministry wizards scattered again.

* * *

Isaac Edwards stood on the topmost point of the Ministry, a narrow tower that protruded diagonally from an outcrop of building. Rachel stood next to him, holding onto him with one arm and clasping the frame of a doorway that seemingly opened into mid-air.

'When I said I could spot them this wasn't exactly what I had in mind,' she remarked, her voice buffeted by the currents of wind flying about up there.

Isaac looked across her, nodded in agreement but said nothing. He held his wand out at an angle that slanted downward violently. He peered into the chaos far down below on the ground.

'What about him?' he asked, pointing with his wand. 'The man in the black puffer jacket.'

Rachel followed the angle of the wand. Far down below, a man in a black puffer jacket was standing very still on the street, looking up at the Ministry, his hand seemingly moving in his pocket. After a few moments she shot Isaac a quick smile.

'He's one of them. They're forming a perimeter. But the Ministry is so complex they're having trouble identifying the perimeter.'

The countless arms of the Ministry trailed in every direction around the central hulk of the building. Isaac turned 90 degrees anticlockwise and leant out into the brink.

'That could be another,' he shouted over a gust of wind, pointing down the line formed by an extended arm of the Ministry. At the point where the protrusion ended, a small figure was visible, standing in the same stance as the first. Rachel looked more closely then nodded, a look of quiet satisfaction on her face.

'He's one too.'

'So you say they're trying to put up a magical barrier around this whole area?' she asked.

'That's right,' he replied. 'One that detects all magic performed within it. And once it's up and running, they'll expand it to cover as wide an area as possible.'

'We can slow them down I suppose,' she remarked. 'But we can hardly stop them altogether.'

'That's all we can do, slow them down a bit.'

'You'll have to get me closer. I can't really concentrate that well up here.''

'No problem,' he replied.

He seized her hand and they disappeared.

Now they stood on an empty corridor in what appeared to be an office or institution of some sort. At the far end of the corridor was a window. They went swiftly towards it, no one crossing their path.

Isaac threw open the window and looked out into the street. They were just two floors up from street level, looking out onto a street widened about twenty meters by an appendage of the Ministry. Now they could clearly make out the wizard standing impassively about ten metres further up the street, wand in hand, marking what was presumably the furthest extent in that direction of the Ministry complex. The street was quiet, as they were some distance from the main Ministry building and the chaos that surrounded it. Isaac glanced up from the street and scanned the windows on the building opposite.

'See the fourth floor window, up on our left?' he said, pointing to it with his head.

Rachel followed the direction of his gaze. A woman stood at the window, looking down at the man in the street, seemingly just another onlooker on the strange spectacle below.

'Yes, I see her,' said Rachel.

'She's the cover for the fellow down in the street.'

'So that's why you can't just take out your wand and take him out.'

'Exactly.'

She smiled a subtle smile to herself.

'But I suppose no one's covering the cover.'

'Probably not.'

She took a few steps away from the window and kneeled down, her eyes already blind to the waking world.

Isaac stared hard at the woman in the window. Her gaze was equally unflinching, never moving off her fellow wizard in the street below. Suddenly she seemed to lose concentration and turned her head vaguely in their direction. As she did so, Isaac's wand was out in an instant and the wizard in the street hit the ground before the woman had a chance to look back. When he glanced back up at the window, he just had time to see the woman sway back from the window and drop out of sight, her face suddenly white and contorted with pain. He turned and looked at Rachel. She was still kneeling on the ground, motionless and placid, a faint smile on her face. He walked over to her and touched her pale cheek. It burned hot, but her closed eyelids didn't flicker at all. At last she opened her eyes and looked up at him, the tips of his fingers still touching her cheek. There was a languid look in her eyes.

'Did you hurt her?' he said tersely.

'Did you hurt him?' she replied.

He didn't answer.

'Did you enjoy it?' he continued

'Yes.'

He looked at her sadly as he helped her to her feet. Then they were gone from the building.

* * *

Kingsley Shacklebolt looked down and saw a pool of blood by his boot. He glanced across at his wand arm and saw a violent gash through his torn and blood-stained robe. _The barrier's down again_, he noted. The wizard that had attacked him lay sprawled on the shiny black pavement of the square, a few feet away from him. _He must have caught me with a curse as he fell._ He looked around for Edmund Glimlatch. The wizard was crouched at the foot of the Ministry building, bleeding and injured himself, but still trying to regenerate the barrier. Hearing angry shouts from around the corner, Kingsley drew out his wand again, and stepped forward, wincing slightly as he went.

As he turned the corner a flying piece of debris struck him in the chest, knocking him back against a wall. He looked up to see a mob of about twenty people throwing projectiles at a group of three wizards. Tobias Destrument, Xavier Belhaine, Stanislas Pizzuoli. He knew their names and faces only too well from the list of prisoners sent to Azkaban. _We're on the same side, today at least._ Stepping out from the protection of the Ministry building, he felt more exposed, but there was no alternative. The vast plaza opened up in front of him, clogged with smoke, debris and bodies. Shaking his head, Kingsley ran forward to join the three wizards, firing magical projectiles of his own over their heads. He had covered half the distance when he suddenly felt someone apparating very near him. He swerved in the direction where he felt a presence, drawing his wand.

'Good afternoon, Minister' said Isaac Edwards as he emerged onto the plaza at Kingsley's side.

'So it seems you do do magic after all,' Kingsley remarked, gesturing at the wand in Isaac's hand.

'Needs must,' Isaac replied swiftly and the two wizards surged forward together.

'How long have we got?' asked Kingsley.

'We managed to break the cordon,' replied Isaac, his low voice barely audible above the din. 'But they started repairing it almost straight away. I think they're using an array.'

'A what?' shouted Kingsley, dodging a rock as it landed barely a foot away from him.

'It's a kind of prototype magical device that in theory magnifies enchantments and widens their target range. Tonight we should get to see how well it works in practice.'

Noting Kingsley's blank face, he added, 'I included it in a report I sent last year to Mr Knott.'

Kingsley shot him a wry smile.

'I must have missed that one. I'll be sure to ask Mr Knott about it when I see him.'

'Let's hope he's not in his office right now,' replied Isaac.

'From now I'll make sure I read all your reports.'

Isaac nodded in reply, a faint smile on his lips. They drew alongside the Citadel wizards.

'Need some help?' said Kingsley to Tobias Destrument.

'Just a bit,' Destrument replied, shooting a quick grin at the Minister. They were about to start trying to drive back the advancing mob when the magical barrier was re-erected between the two sides. _Thank goodness for Edmund Glimlatch_.

* * *

Ginny Weasley could smell scorched hair. Looking down, she could see that the ends of her hair had been singed by a curse. She turned and fired a series of curses of her own, felling a wizard who stood on a ledge about ten feet below her. _What did Hermione call them? New vow wizards I think_. Despite everything, she found herself feeling surprisingly well disposed towards Hermione. As she looked down, she could make out a small column of redheads bobbing along a passageway some two floors down from her. She dropped the two floors to join them.

By the time Ginny landed she already had three wands pointed at her face. _Ron, Dad, Percy_. The wands were quickly lowered when they recognised her.

'It is you, isn't it?' said Ron, smirking nervously.

'Just let me hex you and you'll see,' she replied brightly.

'Yeah, that's you all right,' he nodded.

They followed the passageway as it snaked back and forth and climbed and fell, before coming to an abrupt end on a narrow ledge overlooking the street. They had reached a point where one of the Ministry's flanks came close to the ordinary office buildings it had displaced, leaving a narrow gap between the two. Down below a group of people seemed to be trying to smash their way through a side door of the Ministry.

'Do you think they'll manage to break in?' said Ginny, peering over Mr Weasley's shoulder.

'Depends on whether the magical enchantments have been weakened enough,' replied Mr Weasley.

A loud splintering noise reached them from below.

'Sounds like they're making progress,' remarked Percy.

'Well, we need to put a stop to that,' said Ron, pulling out his wand.

But before they could take any action, the attackers found themselves under attack as a girl came rushing out of an alleyway, long red hair flying as she fired off curse after curse, felling half a dozen of the attackers before they had a chance to turn around.

'Is that a Weasley?' said Mr Wealsey.

'Sadly not,' replied Percy. 'That's Argenta Coyle, the witchfinder liaison officer.'

By now the group trying to break into the Ministry had turned on Argenta, who was now dodging rocks and other projectiles as she ran towards the Ministry, making for a gap between two sections of building.

'Where she's making for is a dead end,' said Percy, pointing to the place she was heading for.

'Time to go,' replied Ginny, who was the first off the side of the building. The others followed, swooping down to street level, landing between Argenta and the mob. As they landed she turned and rejoined the fight. The mob was more numerous than they had realised and included wizards as well as muggles. Soon the Weasleys were facing both curses and projectiles. Another section of the mob had split away and was attacking them from the other side.

'They're coming from both sides!' she shouted, dodging to her blind side and firing a pre-emptive curse. The curse caught a gangling shaven-headed man in the arm, causing him to drop the rock in his hand. Argenta turned and helped her to repel the onslaught. She grabbed Ginny's arm.

'Let's try and lead them down that side street,' she said, pointing to a narrow street opposite the Ministry. 'They'll be easier to deal with that way.'

Ginny nodded and the two of them broke away from the main group, sending out a hail of curses as they went.

'What are we doing?' shouted Argenta as they ran.

'This was your idea!' replied Ginny.

'I mean in general, what are we trying to achieve?'

'Defend the Ministry, I suppose,' replied Ginny. 'Or the people inside it anyway.'

'If anyone else has escaped from the Ministry through that opening, they're going to get a nasty surprise when they step into the middle of a riot,' said Argenta. 'I can't say I fancy our chances today. I suppose Hermione knows what she's doing.'

With a rapid curse Ginny floored a rioter brandishing a metal chain. They passed down onto the side street, a section of the mob following closely behind.

'I wouldn't pin your hopes on her,' replied Ginny. Then the two of them turned again, firing curses back down the street. The first wave of attackers went down in the entrance to the street, but more clambered over them where they fell, advancing before Ginny and Argenta could fire again. Leading them was the tall, shaven-headed man Ginny had knocked down earlier. His left arm was dripping blood, but in his right hand he held a gun. Ginny fired a curse to try and knock it out of his hand but missed by a fraction. The man grinned and raised his gun. The two girls froze, staring into the bleak end of the gun.

'_Crucio_!' came a voice from behind her, full of rage and tinged with hysteria.

The man fell to the ground in front of her, howling in pain, his gun clanging loudly as it hit the pavement.

'_Crucio, crucio, crucio_!' More men fell, and the remainder turned and backed out of the street at the sight of their comrades writhing in agony on the ground. Ginny turned to look behind her. A skinny man with a dark straggly beard had stepped out from a side street, stripped to the waist and brandishing a wand. A tattoo unmistakable to Ginny crawled up his arm.

'Voldemort lives!' shouted the man.

Ginny scowled at him.

'No he doesn't,' she replied curtly.

The bearded man looked at her with wide eyes.

'In the eyes of the mudbloods, we are all dark wizards,' he stated dramatically. Then he turned abruptly and walked away, without uttering another word.

'Thanks anyway!' shouted Argenta.

They turned and ran back out of the side street, heading back towards the Ministry. Stunned bodies were scattered on the ground, where Argenta and Ginny's attackers had been caught from behind by the remaining Weasleys as they retreated. Ron, Percy and Mr Weasley were scanning the area, but everything was quiet there for the moment. The side door to the Ministry was on fire, but apparently still sealed. Argenta kneeled by the body of one of their attackers.

'I wonder how long he'll be out cold for?' she remarked, looking up at Ginny, who was standing next to her.

'I don't know,' replied Ginny. 'A while, I suppose, depends how resistant to magic the person is.'

'By the looks of things, this lot was pretty resistant to magic in general,' muttered Ron, scowling at the fallen attackers.

'In any case, they're all going to wake up at some point, and then this will all start again,' said Argenta.

'What would you prefer we did? Kill them all?' replied Ginny.

Argenta glanced back down at the body on the floor.

'No, that really would make dark wizards out of all of us,' she replied. 'But we're just postponing fighting them again. We can't win today.'

Ginny looked up the Ministry as it towered above them, smoke rising into the air. She shook her head.

'The genie's not going back in the box, that's for certain,' she remarked.

Argenta stood up and followed Ginny's gaze up towards the Ministry's myriad ramparts, towers and appendages. Squinting through the smoke haze, she could make out two small figures jumping from one tower to another, with a slightly larger group in pursuit.

'Isn't that Harry and Hermione up there?' she remarked.

'Quite possibly,' replied Ginny in a tone as off-hand as she could muster.

'Shouldn't we be helping them?' Argenta continued.

Before Ginny could reply she heard the sound of someone disapparating nearby. She turned around but Ron was already gone.

* * *

The drop from the tower was small enough for Harry and Hermione to jump to the lower level. Harry glanced over his shoulder, counting at least four new vow wizards on their tail.

'Ready?' he said.

Hermione gazed into the emptiness opening out beneath the tower. For a moment her eyes seemed to glaze over and Harry thought she was about to lose her balance. He grabbed her by the arm, but by the time he reached her she had already recovered and steadied herself.

'Ready,' she replied. Her voice seemed to have regained its old determination. When he glanced over, her eyes were dark and concentrated on the drop before them. She glanced back at him for a split second and nodded. They jumped together.

The lower level stretched out in front of them, revealing more black towers, coiled and contorted black cables and shiny, jagged ramparts. The landing was harder than they had anticipated, and they lost their footing and landed in a heap. Harry staggered up first, turning swiftly to pull Hermione to her feet. As they stood up a wand was pointing in their faces.

'You know I could just put us all out of our misery,' said Ron in a glowering voice, not lowering his wand.

'We're probably going to lose today anyway, Ron, so why don't you?' replied Hermione, glaring back at him.

He glanced from Hermione to Harry, and back to Hermione.

'What are we fighting for then?' he replied.

'We're fighting because we all promised,' cut in Harry. 'Even if we're going to lose. But we're here. And you are too.'

Finally Ron lowered his wand. Suddenly something caught his eye in the distance.

'We'd better continue this discussion later,' he said. 'They're coming.'

Harry and Hermione looked back for an instant. The pursuing wizards had reached the lower level and were almost upon them.

'Let's go!' shouted Harry.

They nodded to one another then sprinted across the platform, curses already exploding around them, before scaling another tower. The chase continued on a tortuous route over roof after roof and from tower to tower. Finally, having led their pursuers into an apparent dead end, they disapparated back to a point Hermione remembered passing earlier in the upper parts of the main Ministry complex. In a narrow trench that seemed sheltered from intruding eyes, they stopped to take a rest.

'Not as young as we used to be,' said Harry, breathing heavily as he leaned against the side of the trench.

Hermione dropped to her knees. She was too out of breath to reply. Instead she could only gaze into the shiny black surface of the Ministry. Ron was not as tired as the other two, having joined the race later. He prowled around the perimeter, at a distance from Harry and Hermione.

'How long should we try to keep this up?' asked Harry, turning to Hermione.

'I don't know,' she replied as she got back on her feet. 'Long enough to allow as many people as possible to get out of the Ministry.'

'And then we make for that tower? What did Isaac say it was called?'

She looked up. Ron had come to join them. He was standing next to Harry. _This is almost like old times._

'Muirton,' she replied.

'Do we even know where it is from here?' asked Ron.

'Good point,' said Hermione.

'I'm going up to see if I can see it,' said Harry. 'We should at least have an idea of where it is.'

'Well I'll come too,' said Hermione.

The two of them climbed up out of the trench. Ron followed silently. A section of what was now the Ministry's roof stretched away unevenly in all directions. They scanned the tall buildings that lay on all sides around the Ministry.

'That's it, isn't it?' said Harry, pointing at a brutalist concrete tower with darkened windows.

'Yes, that must be it,' said Hermione. 'I hope it'll be some sort of shelter for us.'

On one side the roof fell away to a sort of platform that formed a bridge of sorts between two wings of the Ministry. The platform was propped up between two ugly, squat towers, themselves covered with countless overhanging ledges that served as walkways and steps. The platform and the far side seemed quiet and deserted. Suddenly a fresh flurry of curses started up behind them.

'They're back,' said Ron.

They dropped noiselessly down onto the platform. From there they had a better view of what lay beyond. Beyond the end of the platform, the opposite tower rose out of a lower platform, and beyond that was yet another rise of the building.

'We should check what's on the other side,' said Harry. 'It all seems a bit too quiet down here.'

'You're right,' replied Hermione. 'It makes sense to move forward if we can.'

'If someone's waiting for us, we'll just have to blast our way through,' Ron remarked, twirling his wand in his hand. The air of agitation about him was palpable.

'We will, if we can,' said Hermione in a quiet voice.

'Let's go then,' said Ron, already starting across the glimmering black platform.

Harry stood his ground, shooting a glance at Hermione.

'Someone has to stay here and guard the rear,' said Hermione, gesticulating up at the ledge they had just left behind. Ron paused and looked back from the middle of the platform.

'Two should go forward and one should stay here,' said Harry.

The three of them looked at one another in silence.

'You two scout out what's down there,' said Hermione finally, breaking the silence. 'I don't mind staying here.'

'We'll be back for you in a minute,' said Harry. Hermione nodded and Harry and Ron made their way quickly across the platform. As they approached the edge, they dropped to the ground and crawled the final few metres to the edge. Harry glanced back for a moment then poked enough of his head over the edge in order to get a glimpse of what, or who lay below. He looked back and said something inaudible to Ron then looked back at Hermione and raised his thumb to signal the all clear. She nodded, watched Harry and Ron disappear off the edge of the platform then turned back to guard the ledge above her.

For a while all she could hear was the whistling of the wind, and beneath it muffled shouts and the sounds of curses and possibly guns being fired. She looked around her and out over the vast expanse of London beyond, wondering how high she was. Suddenly she heard the sound of something landing on the platform above her. She turned quickly, her wand outstretched. A man jumped over the ledge and from mid-air discharged his wand in Hermione's direction. Hermione ducked to one side, but before she had the chance to return fire, a curse flew past her and downed her attacker.

She turned again, grateful that Harry and Ron were covering her back, even though they had given no warning of their return. But walking towards her was a man quite unknown to her. He was smartly dressed in pinstriped trousers, a maroon shirt and waistcoat, and his long dark hair was tied back in a ponytail. He winked at Hermione and smiled at her as he walked calmly towards her. In his hand there was a wand.

'Don't move!' she shouted. The man stopped in his tracks, but continued to smile at her.

'Who are you?' she added.

'Jack Painsmaye,' he replied, casually pointing his wand at her. The name meant nothing to her. 'What about you?'

'Eloise Midgen,' she replied, judging it best to lie at this point.

'Another second and he would have taken your head off,' said Jack Painsmaye, pointing his wand at the prone figure on the ground.

'Thanks, I suppose,' said Hermione. She glanced at the man sprawled on the ground. She felt certain she recognised him as a new vow wizard. But who was this Jack Painsmaye? A new vow wizard? A Citadel wizard? Or a regular Ministry wizard?

'Did you escape from the Ministry?' Jack Painsmaye asked.

'Yes,' she replied, clenching her wand tighter.

'You should come down,' he said. 'Things are quieter down below now.'

'Is that so? It still sounds like a riot down there to me.'

'Come down,' he insisted, smiling all the while. 'Mr Morley wants to talk to you. _Incarcero_!'

Hermione had already moved by the time he delivered his curse, but as she landed a wave of pain shot up her arm, causing her to drop her wand. She glanced down and saw that Painsmaye's curse had caught the tip of her hand. A coil of barbed wire had wrapped itself around her fingers, and was slowly making its way up over her wrist and up her lower arm, constricting and digging into her flesh. She reached down for her wand, but the wire on her fingers prevented her from gripping it and it slipped back out of her grasp. Painsmaye cursed her again, and this time the barbed wire wrapped itself around her leg, causing her to fall to her knees. She dragged herself to her feet as quickly as she could, but by the time she was up the man was already grabbing her firmly around the arms and half-dragging her across the platform towards the edge. Their progress was slow, as Hermione could barely walk, and Painsmaye had to keep prodding her forward.

'Don't even think about disapparating,' said Jack Painsmaye. 'I'll decide when we leave.'

By now the wires had wrapped their way up most of her arm. The pain was intensifying, and when she looked down at her sleeve it was stained with blood. When they were about halfway across the platform, she had composed herself enough to start to formulate a plan. With the situation as it was, the best she could think of was to shout:

'Harry! Ro..!'.

Painsmaye's hand was clamped over her mouth before she had time to get both names out. He stopped for an instant to listen. Up on the platform it was quiet again, the blowing of the wind the only discernible sound. The sun had come out, casting a pinkish orange glow over London. And now Harry was striding across the platform, his wand raised. Painsmaye fired off a curse straight away, which Harry deflected. Painsmaye's next shot arched wide past Harry, so wide that it couldn't have been aimed at him, but rather at Ron, who had just climbed onto the platform himself. By then Harry had already fired a volley of curses, which scorched the sky around Hermione and Painsmaye. Painsmaye's grip on Hermione suddenly weakened, and she wrenched herself free, but as she twisted herself around, the barbed wire was pulled tighter and she cried out in pain, staggering as she struggled to stay on her feet.

Painsmaye fired again at Harry, taking a couple of steps back as he did, but Harry dodged the curses again, seemingly flicking them away as if they were nothing but flies buzzing around his head. _I haven't seen him like this for a long time_. Now Ron was adding curses of his own to Harry's. Painsmaye seemed in trouble, but with a deft flick of his wrist, he deflected a curse from Harry and sent one of his own, catching Ron on the foot and knocking him to the ground. Ron stumbled back to his feet, but his approach had been slowed.

Still Harry came closer. Unlike with Skelton, he had no words. Painsmaye grabbed Hermione by the hair, pulling her backwards so that she came toppling onto the floor. Somehow she stopped herself from crying out in pain. As she fell, she threw all her weight against him, managing to push him off balance. This was all the time Harry needed to deliver a stinging curse full in his chest, driving him back several metres and leaving him sprawled on the hard, dark surface of the platform. Immediately the barbed wire fell away, and Hermione was back on her knees, trying to stand as Harry came towards her. Her leg and arm stung with pain, and she was dripping blood on the ground, but she met his gaze and dredged up some sort of smile, which he returned as he moved quickly towards her. He was no more than a few metres away when she caught a glimpse of something glinting white in the distance, at the far end of the platform.

'Harry turn around!' she shouted, but the shots had already begun to ring out. The first two missed, but the third and the fourth hit Harry in the side and in the abdomen as he turned. The fifth and sixth were aimed at Ron, who yelled in agony and dropped to the ground, one of his fingers exploding in a little cloud of blood and bone. When Hermione looked up, Mr Morley still had his arm raised, the gun outstretched. He was surrounded by a group of wizards, who had their wands drawn. Even from a distance she could see him smiling victoriously.

In an instant she was on her feet, her wand back in her hand. She looked at Mr Morley and his followers as they began to approach her across the platform, its black shiny surface glinting in the afternoon sun. At the same time more began to climb up onto the platform. Her mind was empty. Mechanically she reached into her pocket and pulled out a gun, a replacement for the ones Ron had taken from her. Simultaneously she raised her wand and the gun and began walking towards them, firing curse upon curse and bullet upon bullet. The wizards were taken by surprise and started jumping or disapparating away to avoid the intermingling of curses and bullets. Then, as Hermione advanced, she became dimly aware that others had joined her, wizards dressed in black, Caius's coven, raining curses down on the wizards who were still there. Ron was back up on his feet off, erratically firing the wand he was holding in the wrong hand, blood still leaking from his wand hand. The enemy was in retreat, outnumbered as the Coven of the White Tooth pressed forward against them. Hermione's finger was still pulling the trigger, but she could no longer tell if she was firing any bullets. Mr Morley stumbled, hit by a curse or a bullet, his knees apparently giving out underneath him. Reaching the place where he was staggering to his feet, she dropped the gun and raised her wand. For a moment he looked at her defiantly, before Chloe Goodwin put her hand on his shoulder and the two of them were gone.

Hermione looked around, her eyes wide, as if she was just waking up. Bodies were strewn over the platform, some still, others moving their limbs. _What I am doing here? … Harry.. Harry!_ She turned and ran back across the platform.

Ron was already leaning over him, his face white and his wounded hand shaking.

'He's not dead,' he said in a raw voice.

Harry lay in a pool of blood. Hermione kneeled down and took his head in her hand, her hair hanging low until it brushed his face. His eyes were closed but his chest was moving up and down under his t-shirt, which was drenched in blood. She was halfway through the first healing charm before she even realised what she was doing.

'Got any of that Dittany stuff?' said Ron breathlessly.

She paused as she reached the end of a charm, pulling up Harry's t-shirt to examine its effect. There seemed to be some improvement at least. _But I can't heal this, not with the charms I know._

'His wounds are too serious,' she somehow managed to reply, her heart beating in her throat. She looked around at Ron and saw the terrible mess where one of his fingers had been blown away. 'I can close your wound at least, although there's not going to be much left of that finger.'

She was still gripping her wand with her other hand, holding so tightly that it felt as if wand and hand were riveted together. She raised it and cast an enchantment over Ron's shattered finger, which closed the wound. Ron winced loudly but seemed to rally a little. She looked at him sadly for a moment. Then she looked back down at Harry, launching back into all the healing charms she knew off by heart. His breathing seemed more even now, and the blood had stopped leaking from his wounds. He seemed to stir slightly, and his eyes opened and closed. She leaned over and kissed him on the forehead. She started another charm, even though she already knew that all the good she could do had already been done. An idea began to form but just as quickly started to slip away. She tried to grasp for a remnant of it but it had already sunk into nothingness. The day seemed to be darkening all around her, although she could still see the sun shining dimly, as if through a cloud of ash. Now the last of her strength seemed to be draining away too. Numbly she lay down next to Harry, gently tilting his head so that it faced hers. He stirred again vaguely but didn't speak. She lay her forehead against his and closed her eyes, willing silence around her. _If you go, I go. If you stay, I stay._ Distant sounds started to intrude on them. She tried to drive them away, but they became clearer and more insistent.

'He has to get to a hospital.'

She opened her eyes, but saw only black in front of her. Then her vision cleared and she could see Caius kneeling down next to her. He put his hand on her shoulder.

'Hermione, he has to get to a hospital now. I'm going to take him right away, while it's still possible to apparate out of here,' he said firmly.

She looked around at him, not quite understanding what he was saying to her. Finally she understood him and she allowed him to help her to her feet. Meredith put her arm around her, gripping her tightly in case she lost her balance. Then Caius knelt down and picked up Harry's limp body in his arms.

'When I get him to a hospital I'll send you a message. A text message, probably.'

Hermione looked at him blankly.

'I'll see you at the tower,' he added.

She tried to remember what tower he was talking about. Finally she remembered something and nodded in reply. He tried to smile, but could only manage a weak grimace. Dimly Hermione felt herself being transferred from Meredith's grasp to Ron's familiar embrace. She leaned against his shoulder for a few moments then straightened herself to stand on her own, his good hand still supporting her by her back.

Meredith stood back and nodded sadly to Caius. Then he disapparated, carrying Harry's blood-stained body. Meredith looked out over London, then pointed to a bleak concrete tower across from the risen Ministry building.

'That's the one, isn't it?' she said.

Ron nodded. They stood in silence for a moment.

'We'd better get going,' said Meredith. 'We've only delayed them. Their magical cordon will be in place soon enough.'

In illustration of her remark, she fired a curse that shot out over the side of the platform and beyond it, over the edge of the building. At some distance below it shattered in a ball of sparks.

Hermione looked at the tower where they were supposed to rendezvous, blood dripping from the tips of her hair. Then she looked down into the void below them, where the invisible barrier was rising up all around them. _Where do we go from here? There's nowhere, nowhere. Apart from even further down into the dark. Harry, weren't you going to come down there with me?_

As they were leaving she looked down one last time at the place where he had fallen. A trickle of his blood rolled down a little slope and gathered in a little pool at the bottom. A broad red smear had been left on the platform, the partial outline of his body still visible.


	46. The vigilance of Hermione Granger - Ch24

24\. The hole in the sky

The 23rd floor of Muirton Tower was a vast, echoing rectangular space, its partition walls removed, leaving behind a disconsolate collection of abandoned office furniture, empty metal filing cabinets, cardboard boxes and assorted rubbish. Around fifty witches and wizards had gathered on the threadbare grey carpet, the atmosphere hushed and sombre. Some crouched or sat in small groups of family or friends, others looked down out of the long, dirty windows at the view of London below, now a sea of lights in the gathering darkness. A cold November night had set in, the wind whistling all around the building. From time to time, the sound of steps echoing up the stairwell reached the wizard placed on sentry duty. Then after a few minutes another small group of wizards would trudge into view, out of breath after the long ascent.

It had been late afternoon when the first wizards reached the tower. They had crept inside in twos and threes so as not to draw attention to themselves, but the building was silent, and even the security guard had seemingly abandoned his post. The rest skulked in small groups in doorways and alleys on the surrounding streets, awaiting their turn. Fortunately, the streets around the tower had been drained of people by the spectacle over at the Ministry.

'At this rate we'll have to start occupying the next two floors as well,' Ron muttered, examining his bandaged hand and touching the air at the point where his lost finger should have been, as a couple of witches drifted past looking for an empty section of floor.

'Quite possibly,' said George. 'Now stop playing with your hand and make your move. You'll get used to the loss soon enough.'

George and Mrs Weasley were already on the 23rd floor when Ron, Ginny, Percy and Mr Weasley reached there. Luna had been with them too, along with Lee Jordan, whom Ron hadn't seen in a few years, and a woman who turned out to be Lee Jordan's sister. Mrs Weasley had followed a particularly circuitous route from the Burrow: unable to enter the Ministry, she had made it instead to George's shop on Diagon Alley. He was barricaded inside, because muggles had got into Diagon Alley and were smashing up the shops. From Diagon Alley they had gone back to the Burrow, but muggles were roaming Ottery too, looking for wizards. They had gone instead to Luna's father's house, which was at a more remote location. From there they had ended up back in London, at Lee Jordan's sister's flat in Elephant & Castle. It was there that Mr Weasley's patronus found them, calling them to the 23rd floor of Muirton Tower. Luna had come with them. She was hoping to hear what was happening at Hogwarts, where Neville was, but there was no news yet. Mr Weasley had even heard from Bill, Fleur and Charlie, who were all safe and a long distance from London. Everyone had heard the news about Harry.

Ron nodded to George, picked up his hand of cards and shuffled them in an overly demonstrative manner that he recognised as being faintly ridiculous. Finally he selected a card and played his hand in the game of whist he was playing with George, Percy and his father. _Why are we even playing cards? _A pack of cards was a classic muggle item, and he wasn't sure he was all that keen on the muggles anymore. His father just happened to have them on him.

The Weasley family was occupying an area almost in the middle of the floor, stretched out on dismantled cardboard boxes. Mrs Weasley had managed to throw together some supplies in the way of blankets, two flasks of tea, two rounds of cheese sandwiches and some biscuits. For the time being, no magic was allowed: everyone was waiting for Kingsley Shacklebolt to give the all clear. He was off carrying out tests with Isaac Edwards and Argenta Coyle, whom he seemed to have been appointed as ad hoc deputies, perhaps to make up for years of not taking them seriously. From time to time he would reappear to give an update, first having implored everyone to keep their voices down and not use their wands. No one was exactly sure how high the magical cordon being cast over London reached, but the last anyone had heard the borderline lay somewhere between the 17th and 18th floors.

Ron reached for the flask of tea, took a sip then glanced down at the half-eaten chocolate biscuit sitting on his corner of the cardboard. He continued to scrutinise his hand, tutting at the card Percy had just put down. Whist was the only card game Ron knew, and his knowledge and skills in the game far outstripped the others, who had scarcely ever held a playing card in their hand before. But his card-playing prowess seemed worthless to him.

His gaze drifted around the random gathering of wizard society spread out over the floor before returning to Ginny, who saw in silence a short distance from her family. She returned his glance for a moment then looked away. He had been the one to tell her what had happened to Harry. She hadn't opened her mouth since. Mrs Weasley had been left to make conversation with Luna, which was not entirely to her taste.

Hermione was present on the 23rd floor too, only she wasn't sitting with the Weasleys. Although _present_ wasn't really the right word to describe her. She seemed almost transparent with grief, her gaze not registering at all when Ron tried to look at her. She sat in a corner, looking down at the dirty carpet beneath her or at the bare wall just across from her, along with Demelza Robins, another girl from Hogwarts whose name Ron didn't know, and a dark-haired girl with glasses who was apparently not even a proper witch but a former follower of Lillian Herrick.

* * *

Hermione mechanically reached into her pocket and looked at the illuminated screen of her mobile phone. No new messages. A good twenty minutes had passed since Caius's message had reached her. It said simply:

'_Made it to hospital. He's stable. We're on our way_.'

Dimly she realised that mobile phone networks had probably been disrupted by all the chaos. She glanced down at her arm, lifting her sleeve slightly to expose her wrist. _The enchantment's still working_; _he's still alive_.

As soon as she had received Caius's message, she had made for an empty corner of the building, to enter the Circle, to see Harry again, in whatever state he was in. She had crept into the room where they were keeping him and stood in the corner, an unseen presence to the nurses. Harry was unconscious, but evidently stable. She had even used the Circle to get one nurse to ask a doctor when he might wake up. _No time soon_ was the reply. Once the nurses had done their rounds, and he was alone in his room, she had ventured out of the corner to come to his bedside, to hold his hand and stroke his cheek. She had descended deeper under the red sky, to see if she could reach his island, to speak to him there. But she could only get as far as a grassy promontory overlooking a choppy sea, a rugged island visible some way off shore. No matter what she tried, she couldn't get beyond the sea. All that was left to do was return to the hospital room, watch him sleep, stroke his hair some more. After a few minutes the sound of a nurse entering the room was almost a relief. She had kissed him on the cheek one last time and fled back to Muirton Tower.

The smoke from Rachel's cigarette had an oddly reviving effect on her. She looked across at Rachel. The girl was sprawled on her side, gazing into space. Demelza was sitting in front of her, talking quietly to a witch named Alison Affleck who had been in her year at Hogwarts and who had apparently fled Diagon Alley that afternoon. She worked in the magical creatures trade, a business Hermione knew only too well. She couldn't bear to listen to the description of new vow wizards and muggle looters rampaging through the alley. _Maybe Diagon Alley already looks like it did in the vision Lillian showed me. Maybe there are wizards locked up there too._

Demelza and Allison were obscuring the view to where the Weasley family was sitting, although from time to time Hermione could hear one of their voices. She had no inkling of how she felt about them, or what they thought of her. _Nothing's getting through the static_.

Some time had passed before she realised that Isaac and Argenta had returned and sat down next to her.

'How are things?' she asked vaguely, turning her head stiffly to look at them.

'Well, this floor is outside the anti-magical zone,' said Isaac. He didn't sound particularly upbeat about it. 'At least for the time being.'

'Is their enchantment rising?' Hermione asked.

'It goes up in little jolts. We'll have to see if they've got the capability to cover everything.'

'I bet they have new recruits already,' Argenta added tersely. 'So they'll have more people to boost their signal, so to speak. But we suspect that they're working on a special magical device that could amplify the effect of the enchantment. Then it'll run on its own.'

'And how likely is it that they have something like that?' said Hermione.

'We've heard them talking about it in the past,' replied Argenta. 'We just don't know how close they are to having something that works.'

'Apart from that,' added Isaac, 'it won't be long before they realise that a tall building like this might be a good hiding place for wizards. We won't be able to stay here for very long.'

'Which is a great shame of course,' said Argenta, glancing around at their dismal surroundings.

'It was only ever intended to give us a place to regroup,' Isaac continued. 'We should make the most of the opportunity to use magic while we still can. Kingsley will make the announcement in just a minute. We'll be able to apparate in and out of here if we maintain a trajectory at this altitude.'

Kingsley was making his announcement to the assembled wizards and witches when Caius walked in. Once he had finished telling the assembled company how to apparate safely out of the building, Kingsley went straight up to him, shook his hand and spoke quietly with him for a few moments. No one was in any doubt as to what they were talking about. Caius looked out at the faces staring up at him with a rather nonplussed expression. His usual sense of the theatrical temporarily lost, he shuffled into the corner where Hermione was sitting.

She looked up as he sat down.

'Hello Caius,' she said, trying to sound as bright as possible.

He put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed it a bit.

'How did it go?' she asked.

'I couldn't think of where to go at first,' he replied. 'The hospitals in central London are very busy. This magical detection area doesn't yet extend that far out of central London for the time being, but it's growing. I thought of taking him out of London altogether, going to the nearest hospital to home, but everyone knows everyone around there, and I would have attracted too much attention. Then I remembered the hospital near where I used to live in south London. It's out on the edge of London, quite suburban and anonymous. They said he was in better shape than they expected for someone in his condition.'

'He didn't wake up at all then?' she asked, even though she already knew the answer.

'No,' said Caius, shaking his head. 'They don't know when he'll wake up. But they said he has a decent chance.'

_A decent chance._ She looked again at her wrist. _Keep turning. Keep turning._ They sat in silence for a moment.

'I went to see him,' she said suddenly. 'In the hospital. Just for a few minutes.'

'Through the Circle?'

She nodded.

'I tried to reach him, but I couldn't get close enough. I just ended up looking at his closed eyes.'

She looked down, driving her nails into her palms to force back the tears.

'Hermione,' said Caius gently. 'He'll be alright.'

Her eyes were on her wrist again. She felt oddly certain that he would wake up.

'I know,' she replied. 'I really do have hope.'

She looked up after a few moments.

'Where are the others?' she asked in a more composed voice.

'They're back at Garmon's, getting ready in case there's any trouble up there. Since we're ok to apparate out of here, I'm going to head back myself. If anyone wants to come, they're welcome. Still, things might get interesting up there as well if we've been outed as wizards.'

'If anyone wants to get out of London they should do it sooner rather than later, preferably tonight,' said Argenta.

'It's pretty chaotic out there right now,' said Caius. 'Apart from all the people in the streets, public transport is totally thrown out. The tube is completely out of action. When the ground moved, the tunnels stayed intact, but the tracks all got warped in central London, derailing trains and everything. They reckon it'll be months before it's running again normally.'

As they spoke, they heard the sound of somebody disapparating in the background.

'They've already started,' said Isaac. 'This place should operate as a relay point from now on, until the witch-hunters get wind of it.'

Hermione turned to Demelza.

'What are you going to do, Demelza?'

Demelza shook her head.

'I'm really not sure. My parents live well out of central London. It's too far to walk and I'm not sure whether the zone extends out that far. I was thinking a good place to go would be my grandmother's house in Redruth. That should be far enough from here.'

'Come up to Garmon's if you like, at least for a few days until things calm down a bit,' said Caius. 'We've got room.'

'Could I come too?' said Alison Affleck in a nervous voice.

'Sure,' said Caius.

Caius, Demelza and Alison went to speak with Kingsley, who was in charge of apparations in and out of the tower. They glanced around the room, which despite a series of departures now seemed fuller than before. In a few moments they came back.

'We're going to go quite soon,' said Caius. 'The Minister is going to stay here to coordinate things for as long as this place remains operational.'

'Argenta and I will be assisting him,' said Isaac. 'Probably a few others as well. Kingsley is keeping a record of everyone who comes in and goes out. That way we can pass on information to people who come here looking for their loved ones.'

'What about you two?' said Caius to Hermione and Rachel.

Rachel looked at Isaac.

'I'd like to stay here too. I really don't have anywhere to go, and maybe I could help out in some way.'

'What about you, Hermione?'

She stared at him, her brow furrowed in thought. _What about me, Lillian? What are you going to do with me now? You pull my strings, after all. I hope you're pleased with how things turned out today._ She listened for a reply but none came.

'I have absolutely no idea,' she replied quietly.

'If anyone needs to stay hidden, it's you,' said Isaac.

'Do I really want to hide?' she replied. 'I should have gone down fighting today as well.'

'You were fighting, Hermione, believe me,' said Caius. 'You were pretty scary.'

She almost smiled at that.

'Seriously Hermione, hiding or not hiding, you at least need to rest,' said Isaac. He turned to Argenta.

'If you can hold the fort here for a while with Kingsley, I propose to take Rachel and Hermione to a safe place I know.'

'Why should I get preferential treatment?' said Hermione.

'It's not preferential treatment,' said Isaac. 'Everyone is going to go to ground over the next few days. Everyone who wants to.'

'And what about all the people shut in the Ministry?' said Hermione.

Isaac looked grave. Graver even than usual.

'We've heard that the police and the army have taken charge at the Ministry. They stopped any vigilantes from getting to them at least.'

'Do we know how many got out?'

'Not exactly. We only know for definite about the ones who have come here. Apparently some got out but fled elsewhere.'

'What about Vantricia?'

'We don't know yet.'

Hermione sighed. _I should have gone back inside, not her_.

'What else is happening?'

'Everyone's suddenly very interested in speaking to Mr Morley. He's the new expert on wizards.'

'I saw him for a moment on television while I was waiting in A&E,' Caius added. 'But I couldn't bear to watch.'

'I can imagine what he's saying,' said Hermione.

'There's a lot of talk about Voldemort,' said Argenta. 'How wizards are the real reason for goodness knows how many unexplained deaths.'

'And I suppose they're talking about unmarked graves being uncovered too,' said Hermione.

'Yes, they are.'

'But oddly,' Isaac continued, 'everyone seems particularly outraged that most wizards don't officially exist. The authorities have basically said that they'll have to treat wizards like illegal aliens for the time being. The Ministry has become a kind of de facto detention centre.'

'Oh, and the muggle government resigned,' added Caius. 'Seems the Prime Minister knew all along about us. There's some kind of cross-party caretaker government being set up. It's going to be a big old mess for a while.'

Hermione started to get up.

'What is it you want me to do?' she started to ask.

'Get some rest,' said Isaac.

'You really do need it,' Rachel added quietly.

'I don't know if I can,' Hermione replied, her head in her hands.

'Sorry to interrupt,' came a voice from behind Caius. Caius stepped aside. It was Ron.

'I was wondering if I could have a word with Hermione.'

There was silence. Hermione looked up at him, quizzically, but calmly.

'Sure.'

* * *

The 24th floor had already been colonised by an overspill of wizards. About a dozen of them were huddled around in a group in the middle of the floor conversing in low voices, so they climbed to the 25th floor, the tower's top floor. It was empty and desolate, littered with the same detritus as the other empty floors, but even lonelier without the now familiar sight of wizards camping out there. It was now completely dark outside, but an enchantment was in place so that from the outside the top three floors appeared to be in total darkness. They stood near a dirt-grimed window.

'How's your hand?' said Hermione in a thin voice.

'Doesn't hurt too much now,' he said. 'Thanks for sorting it out.'

'I couldn't do much apart from seal it. I'm not sure that counts as sorting it out.'

'Well, thanks anyway. And thanks for warning us today about … all this. It was completely weird. Down in the Ministry you couldn't even tell we were surfacing.'

'It's all completely weird,' Hermione said. 'And thanks for keeping your promise, particularly when it was such a lost cause.'

'Maybe it's not a lost cause', said Ron.

'Maybe not completely.'

'I know this is a bad time,' he continued, swaying slightly on the spot, 'but I have to speak to you. About a couple of things really.'

Hermione looked at him. Her face was deathly white and her eyes dark. She knew what he wanted to talk about.

'Ask me whatever you want,' she replied. 'I promise I'll tell the truth.'

He nodded slightly.

'What you did was wrong,' he began. 'You admit that, I suppose.'

'I do, absolutely.'

'And that's part of your deal with Lillian Herrick.'

'Doing wrong is a key part of it, yes.'

'But I was playing my part just as well, or just as stupidly, by not believing you.'

She looked down at her feet.

'We were all playing the part that was prepared for us.'

'But I didn't believe you. I owe you a major apology for that.'

She looked up.

'Apology accepted, for what it's worth.'

'Still,' he said, 'things are never going to be the same.'

'No,' she nodded, a tear forming in her eye. 'Would you accept my apologies? For everything I mean?'

He shrugged.

'You can't help how you feel about Harry.'

'No, I can't.'

'But can I ask … how do you feel about him? I'm not sure I get it.'

'I don't know I do either.'

'Are you …'

'No.'

'But then how come you can't …'

'Live without him?'

'Something like that.'

'Ron,' she began, her voice almost a whisper, 'I wanted so much to save him. It pretty much _was_ my life. Trying to work out how to change his fate, thinking about how I couldn't fail him, then realising that at some point he would have to do it alone. And that night at Hogwarts he walked away alone into the woods to face Voldemort. I couldn't go with him. He wouldn't let me. He thought he was saving _me_ or something.'

'But he came back,' said Ron. 'He came back and everything was alright.'

'It was, in a way. And I told myself that it shouldn't matter that he walked away alone and died out there. It wouldn't matter because he came back and everything worked itself out. But it does matter. It never stops mattering. It matters because I was supposed to go with him, right to the very end. I was supposed to go wherever his soul went, because I put all of mine into his. And no matter what happens, no matter how much time passes, I'm still there, watching as he walks out to die alone. So don't ask me if I'm in love with him, Ron, there's no room for being in love in my world.'

Ron's silence continued well after she had finished speaking. Finally he formed his mouth into words.

'Did we lose him again today?'

Her face was pale and dry, desiccated almost.

'He hasn't died.'

'So you have some hope?'

'If I didn't, I'd be thinking about jumping out of the window right now.'

'I get it,' said Ron. 'In fact I've always got it. It's just that you tried to talk me out of it, years ago.'

'You're right,' she replied, looking past him into the gloom. 'Credit where credit's due. When it comes to this issue, you're the perceptive one.'

'Are you making fun of me now?' said Ron, his eyes narrowing.

'No, I was being serious,' Hermione replied, her voice breaking up. 'I've made a complete mess of things. But if I had to do it all again, I would. What was it you used to say? 'Mental, that one.' You were right after all.'

'We were kids when I said that,' Ron replied in a low voice, looking away slightly, as if the memory embarrassed him.

'No, your first instinct was the right one,' said Hermione. Her voice was scarcely audible and there was a distant look in her eyes.

'I can't bear to see you like this,' said Ron suddenly. 'I'll admit, I wanted you to feel sorry for what you've done, but this,' he said, gesturing vaguely in her direction, 'this is too painful to watch.'

'I'm a perfectionist. In this too.'

'And where does it end?'

'I don't know yet. My story's still being written. So the best thing to do is just to put my foot out and follow the path that's being laid out for me. It'll take me to where I need to go. Then I may even find out what exactly it is I'm supposed to do.'

'You're talking about this Lillian Herrick,' said Ron.

Hermione nodded, almost apologetically.

'And what am I supposed to do?' said Ron. 'Just let you slip away?'

'It's not my place to tell you what to do anymore. God knows I've lectured you enough over the years.'

He looked at her with an expression that was part pleading, part defiance.

'Give me an idea of what to do. Anything.'

She looked at him in silence for a few moments.

'Well,' she said finally. 'I have to deal with Lillian Herrick, Harry's got to … well he's got to wake up. So you have to organise the resistance.'

'Me?' he said with a spluttering laugh.

'Yes. I'm guessing you don't want to be a state-registered wizard or whatever else the authorities are dreaming up for us right now. You have some experience of living underground. I think you'll do a good job.'

'You reckon, do you?' he said, a half-smile on his face.

'Absolutely,' she replied, mirroring his smile. 'We'll fight back on more than one front.'

'You'll be fighting back as well?'

The dark, almost pained look returned to her face.

'You can count on it,' she said with grim determination.

She hugged Ron, kissed him on the cheek and walked away. He stood there in semi-darkness, watching her as she headed for the stairs.

* * *

When Hermione came back downstairs she found Isaac Edwards and Kingsley Shacklebolt conversing in low voices.

'Sorry to interrupt,' she said in a rather official-sounding tone, as if they were all back on the corridors of the Ministry. 'I just wanted to ask Isaac something.'

Kingsley nodded and took a step back, partly out of politeness, and partly because Hermione, with her white face and blood stained clothing, didn't seem like someone to be crossed.

Isaac stood in front of her, his head slightly bowed.

'If your offer still stands, I'm ready when you are,' she said.

'No time like the present,' he replied. 'I'll see you at the window in ten minutes.'

In the meantime little pieces of news had filtered through to the 23rd floor. Luna had heard from Neville. He had left Hogwarts, temporarily as he put it, and had made it as far as a boarding house in Inverurie. Vantricia Bellu had returned from the Ministry with a handful more wizards, evidently the last to leave before the opening was closed. One of the wizards who came with her was none other than Luther Penhaligon. Hermione saw him crouching meekly at the side of Myra Tremayne, who was huddled in a corner, still suffering the effects of a painful curse. Apparently even Tobias Destrument had been seen briefly on the 23rd floor. No one knew what he had discussed with Kingsley, but apparently a few wizards had left with him.

Caius, Demelza and Alison Affleck were just about ready to leave. Hermione quickly said her goodbyes, hugging Alison with tears in her eyes despite having only met her once before. Caius reminded her that her things were still in the cottage. She promised to come and get them at some point.

Leaving Rachel at the window that had been designated as the disapparation station, Hermione crept over to the Weasley family group. Ron was not among them. She stood nervously over them, and they looked up at her in unison.

'I just wanted to say goodbye and good luck,' said Hermione, her voice trembling. 'Do you have anywhere to go?'

'We'll be alright,' said Mrs Weasley affably, almost as if nothing serious had happened.

'All we have to do is keep a low profile,' added Mr Weasley. 'I'm not particularly worried about a visit from the witchfinders in the night. But I have to say I don't fancy being a state-registered wizard.'

'You're probably right,' said Hermione. 'But be careful anyway.'

'You're the one who needs to be careful, dear, more than any of us,' said Mrs Weasley. There was no trace of the acrimony of their last conversation.

'I will be careful,' said Hermione. She hesitated before adding, 'I've said goodbye to Ron already.'

'I'm glad you did,' said Mrs Weasley. 'He'll be alright too.'

Behind them she could see Isaac crossing the floor.

'Um … see you later then.' _I hope I do_.

'Yeah, you will,' replied George. Somehow it was the most comforting thing she had heard all evening.

Suddenly Ginny jumped to her feet. She and Hermione looked at each other in silence for a moment.

'He'll wake up,' said Ginny finally. Hermione nodded slightly. 'If _he's_ not virtually indestructible, I don't know who is.'

She couldn't help smiling at that.

'I think you might be right.'

'You need a rest, Hermione,' Ginny added after a short pause, looking her up and down.

'I know,' Hermione replied.

They looked at each other in silence.

'Good luck anyway,' Ginny added at last.

'Good luck to you too,' replied Hermione. They stared at each other for a moment longer. Then Hermione made her way quickly to the disapparation point.


	47. The vigilance of Hermione Granger - Ch25

25\. Sealing the circle

Isaac swung the window open and a gust of wind rushed in. Hermione leaned circumspectly out of the window and looked down through the dizzying darkness, steadying herself by gripping tightly to the window frame. From where she was standing, she could see the dark mass of the Ministry building, surrounded by small fires in the vast square that enclosed it, like a vast crater in the centre of London. Further out, blinking lights sprawled outwards in the streets all around it. Isaac poked his wand out of the window and fired off a burst of light in a horizontal line into the night sky. The beam of light travelled in a straight line for about twenty metres, then suddenly began to plummet downwards, shattering and dissipating in all directions a short distance below.

'That's the edge of the zone,' said Isaac. 'It hasn't moved recently. The window's still open. Ready?' he added, turning to Hermione and Rachel. Isaac took Rachel's hand and Hermione took hers. She took another glance out over the vast glowing expanse of London and the uneasy night unfolding below. Then it was all gone.

* * *

They emerged on a country lane under a star-filled sky, London left far behind. After walking in silence for about half a mile, they passed a scattering of mostly dark houses, with only the occasional light here and there. The village soon petered out first into a collection of farm buildings, open country beyond them. Isaac stopped before the entrance to a double garage, its doors down and locked, illuminated by a single streetlight. He rummaged in his pocket, took out a key and initiated the unlocking mechanism. The garage doors rose up in a smooth motion, whirring in the quiet of the evening. Inside the garage a single car was parked; otherwise there was little inside apart from some rusting agricultural machinery.

'Where are we?' Hermione asked.

'A quick stop on the way to our destination,' he replied. 'I never quite trust the idea of apparating straight to my house: you never know who's monitoring who and what. This warehouse belongs to a relative. He lets me park my car here whenever I need to. You just need to drive the rest of the way.'

He turned to Hermione and Rachel, the car keys outstretched in his hand in the darkness.

'Can either of you drive?'

Hermione shook her head.

'I can,' replied Rachel.

He handed her the car keys.

'I've left directions in the glove compartment. My house is about twenty miles from here. The front door key is in the letterbox. I'll try and make it back tomorrow, but don't be surprised if it takes longer. You shouldn't need to worry about shopping for food. There are enough supplies in the house to last a few weeks.'

Rachel unlocked the car door and slid into the driver's seat, a tired, vacant air about her. Hermione hung back for a moment, leaning slightly against the side of the car.

'You're well prepared,' she said quietly.

'This day has been coming for a long time,' he replied grimly. She nodded sadly. Her face was pale under the streetlight, her eyes dark and moist and ringed by shadows.

'This isn't your fault,' he said, touching her on the arm. 'Take it from someone who knows what it means to be at fault.'

'Why isn't it my fault?' Hermione asked. 'Is it because all this was supposed to happen?'

'Who really thinks that?' said Isaac. 'Not even Lillian Herrick.'

'She didn't cause all this, not exactly,' said Hermione. 'It's like she says: she shows you the path and people walk onto it. Which means I played my part to the full in creating all this. Even what happened to …' She smothered the sob before it got out.

There was something vaguely comforting in the familiar grimness of Isaac's expression.

'You didn't put Harry in a coma,' he replied in a low, but firm voice. 'Not even Lillian did it. Hatred did it.'

She looked at him in silence.

'One thing I know is that it isn't over,' she said finally. 'I have to go and find her, take the next step.'

'Not tonight,' he replied. 'First get some rest.'

He opened the passenger door and made a little gesture for her to get in. Slowly she relented and sat down in the passenger seat. Isaac shut the door and the car pulled away onto the country lane.

* * *

The car sped through the night, along country lanes that rose and fell over hills and followed the contours of others. For the most part the roads were veiled on either side by tall hedges, but here and there they caught a glimpse of valleys dropping away in the distance, scattered lights visible in vast grey expanses of emptiness. Never before had Hermione witnessed someone drive as fast as Rachel. She had to ask her several times to slow down before she finally got the message and let up on the accelerator. To fend off a vague sensation of nausea, Hermione opened the window. When not reading out directions from Isaac's scribbled piece of paper, she leaned out a little into the chill breeze whipping past, which made her feel better.

The house they pulled up outside was a small, one-storey stone cottage, sitting low up against the side of the road in a hollow and surrounded on two sides by small clumps of woodland. The nearest neighbours were a little way up the lane; the cottage seemed suitably secluded. Rachel eased the car onto the grass-covered sideway and the girls stepped out into the cool night air. Rachel located the front door key as Hermione looked around and up into the sky, which was full of stars. She wondered how long it had been since she had looked up and seen a star-filled sky. She could barely remember what the night sky looked like from Chase End, and doubted that she had ever taken the time to look at it. She could scarcely remember a night when she had done anything other than cloister herself in her office, surrounded by books and papers. _Indulging myself_.

They ate a frugal supper in the cottage's sparse, down-at-heel kitchen, stooped over sandwiches at the kitchen table, unable to summon much in the way of conversation. Rachel quickly disappeared to the bathroom, leaving Hermione on her own. She went into the living room, where she lingered in the middle of the room, looking at the blank television screen. _I have to see him. _

Harry had been moved to a different ward. At that hour the hospital was quiet, the corridor in semi-darkness. She pulled up a chair and sat down by his bed, reaching for his hand, slipping hers into his. _This will be my nightly vigil from now on. Thank goodness for the Circle_.

Rachel was still in the bathroom, so Hermione switched on the television, to see if she could bear to see images of the Ministry, of Diagon Alley, of Hogwarts. Within a minute she had turned the sound off: the journalist's frenzied commentary and the barrage of opinions from experts ranging from the political to the paranormal seemed unbearably harsh. Instead she watched the repeating images of the black hulk of the Ministry rising up in the midst of London, swathed in black light, the disorder on the streets, the passengers evacuated from derailed tube trains, bleeding, bandaged and dusty. Now came the first images from inside the Ministry: a shaking camera passing down corridors all too familiar to her, now deserted and sinister, and images of huddled groups of wizards, hiding in offices and amassed in the great atrium of the Ministry. Terrified she would see a familiar face, she switched the television off altogether and sat rigidly in silence on the sofa. Finally she went and knocked on the bathroom door.

'Are you alright in there?' she called through the door.

'I'm fine,' came the reply after a few seconds' delay. 'I'll be right out. Sorry.'

'It's no problem,' she replied. 'I'm just going to bed.'

'Sorry,' came the reply again.

The cottage had two bedrooms, which were of similar sizes, and both so equally sparsely furnished that it was hard to tell which one was Isaac's. Hermione gave up trying to avoid sleeping in the master bedroom, deciding that the notion had no sense there, and instead chose a bed at random. She managed to climb out of her clothes and into the bed before her strength gave way altogether.

It was pitch black when Hermione awoke. She felt somewhat rested, so she deduced that she had been asleep for several hours. She lay on her back for a while, staring at the featureless ceiling above her. When she looked around the room she saw a chink of light under the door. Wondering whether Isaac had returned, she lifted herself up off the bed, silently put some of her clothes back on and crept out of the room. The narrow hall was silent; the light was coming from the other bedroom. She crossed the hall and knocked on the bedroom door.

'Is that you Hermione?' came Rachel's voice from behind the door.

'Yes, it's me,' Hermione replied.

'Did I wake you?' Rachel asked.

'No, don't worry. Can I come in?'

'Of course.'

Rachel was sitting on the bed. She was in a t-shirt, the marks and scars on her arms clear in the bare light from the light bulb. She looked over at Hermione.

'I'm glad you're awake too,' she said.

Hermione crept slowly into the bedroom and sat down on the edge of the bed.

'It's so dark outside,' she said.

Rachel seemed to smile at this.

'Yes, but we have our eyes wide open in the darkness.'

Hermione took her meaning in an instant.

'You were the one who brought the knife to me, the night I left with Harry's wand.'

Rachel nodded, a smile Hermione couldn't interpret still on her lips.

'Yes, I was the messenger.'

'My evil twin.'

'Something like that.'

'Was that your idea or Lillian's?'

'Mine. Do you think Lillian has all the good ideas?'

'It was a pretty sick one, if you don't mind me saying.'

Rachel smiled at this.

'We aim to please. Or I did. Particularly in those days.'

Hermione drew a little closer to her.

'And do I look more like her now?'

'To a certain extent. But don't worry, you're not all the way there yet.'

'You're not the first one to tell me that. You all love telling me how weak I am. How self-pitying I am.'

'Take it as a compliment,' Rachel replied. 'A bit of encouragement. If we tell you that it's because we think you've got potential.'

'You still say _we_, I see,' said Hermione.

'I told you I'm not a traitor,' Rachel replied. 'But really I've no right to say _we_. I'm just doing it for old time's sake. I'm out of the Circle.'

'You say it with regret.'

'I do regret it.'

'And if I asked you to take me to Lillian right now, would you?' Hermione continued. 'You could turn me in, regain your place among them.'

Rachel smiled.

'It's an interesting proposition. But the answer's no.'

'Why not?'

'Even without me the seven are still seven. You're the seventh, Hermione. I don't need to turn you in, as you put it. To all intents and purposes, you've replaced me already.'

'What?!' Hermione exclaimed.

'You've sealed the circle.'

'What do you mean?'

Rachel lifted her head swiftly towards her. She was half prostrate, half crouching on the bed, in a position that reminded Hermione of a cat watching a bird.

'You've closed it so tightly around you, you can scarcely breathe.'

She remembered the feeling that had taken hold of her on top of the Ministry as she looked down at Harry's wrecked body. That was where her plan had led them. Along its merry way from torturing Ron and Ginny to putting bullet holes in Harry. That was its logical conclusion. It was her fault. She listened to the silence. _Are you still saying nothing, Lillian? You're very discreet in victory, I have to say._

'It's true,' she said, 'I have sealed the circle. But if I am the seventh, it will only be to break the Circle entirely. I'll put my guilt to a good cause.'

Rachel's face betrayed no emotion.

'Maybe that's the idea.'

Hermione glanced at the pitch black window and shivered.

'I want to ask you something,' she said, turning back to Rachel.

'Go ahead.'

'When Isaac freed you, why did you go to that building under the red sky?'

Rachel looked at her oddly.

'You mean the scriptorium.'

'Is that its name?'

'That's what I've heard it called.'

'So why did you go there, to the scriptorium?'

'Don't you know why?'

'I have an idea.'

'Tell me. I'm sure you'll be right, someone as perceptive as you.'

'I know you were looking for your friend Caleb. But I had the feeling that you wanted to go somewhere where Lillian couldn't follow you.'

Rachel seemed to shiver.

'I told you you were perceptive.'

'Why can't she go there?'

Rachel leaned closer.

'Because what she feels is her pain, not the pain of others. For me that changed the moment I stopped feeling my pain and started to feel what my family felt when I set off on this life, which I don't regret, by the way, even now. That's why I could go into the scriptorium. And that's why you could go in too.'

Hermione frowned.

'But I haven't really felt the pain of another.'

'You're too modest, Hermione. You think that in order to feel Harry's pain you have to have bullet holes in you too. Do you know what Lillian once said about you? _I've never seen empathy so strong, so blind to itself, that it all turns to guilt_.'

Hermione stopped to think about what Rachel had just told her. _Is that why she's so interested in me?_

'And Lillian,' she began, 'does she want to enter the scriptorium?'

'She's the only one who can answer that question. But if you want my opinion, she knows she has to go there eventually.'

Hermione stared out of the window and the silent dark beyond it. _Is that it, Lillian? Is empathy what you really need, only you're afraid it will annihilate you?_ There was no reply from the dark. She turned back to Rachel.

'Did you speak with him in there?'

A look of sadness flashed across Rachel's face.

'With Caleb? No.'

'But I thought I saw him in the distance.'

'You did. But he's hiding from me.'

'Why?'

Rachel fixed her with an empty gaze

'Because of what he did to seal the circle.'

Hermione swallowed.

'He did something to you…'

Rachel laughed bitterly to herself.

'He thought my way of sealing the circle was a bit pathetic. Too weak to work properly.'

'But isn't it the scale of the guilt that counts, not the scale of the act?' said Hermione.

'Oh that's all too true. But Caleb is a bit more of a perfectionist. First he considered killing me. But he couldn't bring himself to do it. So he did the next best thing. And drugged Justin so he'd have to watch but couldn't do anything. He cried as he did it. And when he left he said _now you know how much you mean to me_. In a way it was a declaration of love.'

Now Rachel looked away, lost in a reverie. _What can I possibly say?_

'But now he feels your pain.'

Rachel looked back at her, glassy eyed.

'Yes. So I suppose the closer I get to him, the more excruciating it becomes for him.'

The bedroom and the night outside were silent. Rachel stretched out on her side, tiredness apparently overcoming her.

'Do you want to sleep now?' said Hermione softly.

'Very soon,' replied Rachel. 'I wonder where Isaac is.'

'Back at Muirton Tower I should think,' replied Hermione.

'I hope he comes back soon,' said Rachel. 'His presence does me good. Makes me feel you can feel the pain of others and live with it. You have the same effect on me.'

* * *

Two days passed without any sign of Isaac. Outside the cottage nothing seemed to move. Birdsong was the only sound to interrupt the silence. The sky was pale and cloudless and the mornings and nights were chill. A fever took hold of Rachel and she largely withdrew to her bedroom, trying to sleep off the effects. Hermione found some paracetamol for her in a cupboard and made her cups of tea and soup. In spite of the sickness, Rachel was oddly cheerful.

Hermione was unwilling to walk far from the cottage, distrusting the winding country lanes around it for fear of whom she might meet there. Every day she followed a circuit in a tight loop over the fields behind the cottage, avoiding the neighbouring houses. Occasionally she heard a car or a tractor passing on the lane outside, and when evening fell lights were visible in the nearby houses. But otherwise she interacted with no one.

On the third morning, Hermione found Isaac slumped over the kitchen table, exhausted.

'We've shut things down at the tower,' he said, looking up at Hermione through bloodshot eyes. He had spent three nights there with Kingsley, Argenta and Mr Weasley, receiving everyone who passed through there.

'We had witch-hunters sniffing around at reception first thing this morning,' he muttered, almost to himself. 'There were about twenty of us upstairs at the time. We got everyone out then left a message saying we had closed down. We got out just in time.'

'Where are the rest?' said Hermione.

'In hiding,' he replied. 'Some have even left the country, although things are happening abroad as well. Seems other governments have wizards in their midst too,' he added drily, before slumping back in his seat again. Hermione thought it best not to ask any more questions and to just let him sleep.

Two days passed with scarcely a word being spoken. Hermione vacated the spare room and slept on blankets on the living room floor. Isaac seemed too tired even to protest at the arrangement. Rachel was only partially recovered and still spending most of the time sleeping.

The next morning Hermione awoke around dawn. It was still half dark outside, the cottage surrounded by its customary silence. When she got up and went to the window, she found a low mist hanging around the house.

She washed and packed her few remaining possessions into her bag, then ate a sparse breakfast alone in the kitchen as it gradually grew lighter outside. Standing noiselessly by the kitchen door, she put her shoes on then stepped out into the cold morning. She paused for a moment before leaving as she stood on the back step, buttoning her jacket right up to the collar. Behind the cottage lay a small, secluded garden with an empty vegetable patch, and beyond it a low dry stone wall. She crossed the garden, eased herself over the wall and jumped down into the grass on the other side. She skirted along the edge of a farmer's field, following a rough track she had found a few days earlier. The track led away from the hamlet in which Isaac's cottage was located, moving gradually uphill. After about fifteen minutes' walk, she came to a point where the rough track joined with a bridleway: this marked the furthest extent of her daily walks around the cottage. She glanced back at the path behind her, thinking vaguely of the note she had left on the kitchen table. It read simply: _Don't worry about me. I'm fine. It's time for me to go, to take the next step._ She walked on.

She followed the bridleway across country for more than an hour. The sky was pale grey, covered by a thin layer of cloud. At one point a few spots of drizzle began to fall, but they petered out after a couple of minutes. At one point she met a grey-haired couple out hiking. They nodded curtly at her as they passed in the other direction. Otherwise the bridleway was empty. It wound its way around a ridge of low hills, before gradually descending on the other side into flatter country. Soon she could see overhead railway lines crossing the horizon. The bridleway led all the way to the railway line, terminating in a small wooden gate. She eased open the gate, listening for the sound of an approaching train. Silence hung over the tracks.

The path resumed on the other side of the tracks, running alongside the railway for some distance, widening until it was the width of a road, the dirt track turning first to gravel, then to cracked and weatherworn tarmac. On one side of the road ran the wire fence that served as a barrier to the railway line; on the other stretched a flat, featureless field. She followed the road until she came to what looked like an abandoned signal box. The roof of the squat, rectangular building had caved in and weeds were poking through cracks in the walls. Even in such a remote place, the remains of the building had been daubed with graffiti. She stared for a few moments at the ruin then glanced back over her shoulder: there was no one on the road, no cars and no one on foot. Turning her back to the signal box, she walked in a straight line into the adjacent field. After 25 paces she stopped and glanced around her again: the field was empty and silent. She kneeled on the earth and took her wand out of her jacket. Here, surely, magic would not be traced. In any case, she needed to cast only the faintest of spells. Looking down at the ground, she traced a small rectangle in the earth with the tip of her wand, whispering a few words under her breath. Laying her wand to one side, she prised open a layer of earth, revealing a small, perfectly smooth and dry cavity inside. Then she took up her wand and laid it inside the cavity.

'_I hope we see each other again,_' she had told Rachel out of the blue, the last time they had spoken.

'_I reckon we will_,' Rachel had said finally in an affable voice. '_Maybe there'll be another time when we get to fight together. Although I'm not sure what against._'

'_When I work it out I'll let you know_,' Hermione had replied. '_If you're up for a good suicide mission, I'm sure we can think of something_.'

'_Yes, those are the best_,' had been Rachel's reply.

Once she had folded back the layer of earth there was no indication that the ground had been opened. She made no further marking, trusting that her memory of the place would remain fixed in her mind until she could reclaim the wand. As she knelt on the soft earth, she felt a little wind at her back, ruffling her hair. She shivered, but she knew it wasn't from the cold.

'_You are the seventh_,' Rachel had said. The shiver ran up her back and down her arms, and she felt her neck stiffen. The sensation was almost pleasing. She closed her eyes, whispering the incantations, which seemed to take no time at all.

Light was flooding into Harry's room: here the morning was brighter. Thankfully there was no one else in the room. She took up her usual seat at his bedside, leaning over him until her cheek was just resting against his. She stayed in that position for a few moments, then took hold of his limp hand and moved it until it was touching the bracelet on her wrist. The lights raced on as always; she often checked for any sign that they were moving more slowly, but that never seemed to happen. Footsteps could be heard in the corridor, then the door handle turned; by the time the door was open she was gone from the room.

She allowed her head to drop downwards so that she was facing the earth, the tautness in her limbs fading and softening. She placed her hands on the ground and closed her eyes again. The moment her eyes were closed, the ground seemed to fall away so that she was standing on the edge of a great precipice, invisible in the dark. In her head she heard myriad voices whispering at great speed. She could not make out the words, but she took them all in nevertheless. Gradually the whispering faded out until just seven words remained. _Remade in the pain of the other_. The words were an invitation. An open door. An empty page in a book. _No, I won't open my eyes._ She teetered on the edge of the precipice, in complete darkness, for a few moments more. Then she opened them.

The landscape before her was vaster than any that she had even seen before, or could even have imagined. It seemed to defy what was possible for the human eye to see: there, on a seemingly never-ending plain stretched countless towers, built in every possible material and style, some ornately carved in sombre grey stone, others ramshackle piles of ill-fitting adobe floors, others more like small citadels with battlements and outbuildings, others no more than scattered heaps of dreary debris. However great or miserable, an equal space seemed to have been allotted to them, as if each tower occupied a single square in a giant chessboard.

The landscape was not static: some of the towers shifted left or right in their entirety, an empty space opening up in the place that had been vacated. Above the massed ranks of towers hung a vast, red sky that seemed to pulse as she looked at it. As she looked into the sky, her gaze was caught by something far off in the distance. It towered above everything at an unfathomable distance, like a rainbow, but it was solid, and unlike the lands around it, utterly fixed in the place where it lay. A great domed building, with a vast perforated cupola, from which only darkness seemed to escape: _the scriptorium_. A mingling of exhaustion and dread seized her. She looked away from the cupola and back at the sprawling land shifting and rearranging itself before her. _What am I supposed to do here_? Then the answer came to her. _You just walk. Wherever you want to_. This was her prize: to wander that strange land wherever she wished, and walk right into the mind of any person she desired. The possibilities seemed not only endless, but all the time growing more numerous as they multiplied under the vast red sky. _But this is Hermione's prize_. She shook her head. _Hermione is resting now. There's nothing here for me. _Still on her knees, she closed her eyes and wished to see only what was mundane, everyday and real.

When she opened her eyes, she found herself once again in the middle of the sad, muddy field, next to the unmarked grave she had made for her magic. She lingered a little while longer, a chill wind swirling around her, until it occurred to her that her knees must be damp. Then she stood up and walked away without looking back.

A station building came into view up ahead, sitting atop a raised embankment, no other buildings around it. The station platform was open to the elements, apart from a small concrete shelter. The stone station building was locked up and there were no other passengers on the platforms. The only signs that any trains were scheduled to stop at the station came from the scrolling electronic display fixed to the wall of the station building and from the fact that the ticket machine duly dispensed a ticket when she fed it with a ten pound note. Attached to the outer wall of the station building was a public toilet, and she was surprised to find that the door yielded when she pushed it. The interior had bare concrete walls, but it was clean. She shut herself in the only cubicle and sat down, placing her beaded bag, the only magical device still in her possession, on her lap. After rummaging through the bag, she took out a black plastic box. A mirror was fitted to the box's inside lid. She examined her thin, pale face with a sigh, and a tiny, almost silent sob escaped from her. She wiped her eyes and took out the first tube from the box. In silence she began to apply a layer of foundation to her face, smiling grimly as she thought what instruments she had at her disposal in the absence of magic. The chemical smell of the various products made her recoil slightly: with magic, a disguise could be put on and taken off in an instant. The application of a thick layer of make-up to her skin seemed more invasive, more permanent somehow, more of a betrayal. When she was finished, she peered into the small mirror. The layer of foundation gave her face an almost mask-like appearance, and the eye make-up and lip gloss accentuated her eyes and mouth. _Vile_, she thought to herself, _but this is how it's going to have to be_. _I already look like a different person._ With a different hairstyle, clothes and accent, the disguise would be complete, and as hard to penetrate as if applied by magic.

A vague wind was blowing down the platform as she sat down on a peeling wooden bench, pulling her jacket tighter around her. '_Muggle means of transport only from now on_,' she had said to herself as she walked out of the cottage that morning. As she heard the line repeated in her head, she told herself that muggle was a word she would have to forget. When the train glided into the station, she was the only passenger to board. Only a handful of passengers were scattered about the carriage. A glimpse of her reflection in the blurry glass was enough to make her breath catch in her throat: _that's not Hermione_.

As the train pulled out of the station, she silently began to practise a new incantation: the story of the passenger on the train, a nondescript girl from nowhere in particular, with no ambitions and nothing of importance in her past. Until it was safe to bring her back, Hermione Granger would have to stay asleep, clutching her wand as she lay in the earth.

* * *

End of part two.


	48. The penitence of Lillian Herrick - Ch 1

1\. The Headmaster's footsteps

The castle stood in a pathless wilderness of moorland and forest, its battlements and turrets mute beneath a heavy, ashen sky. Lights were on at the lower levels, but the towers were dark and vacant. No pupil or teacher could be seen in the grounds or in the school's great courtyard: from time to time, an indistinct figure could be seen crossing the courtyard, or a vague outline seemed to move against a lit window.

The front doors were closed. A sentry stood beside them, wand in hand. He was smartly dressed, but wore no uniform and didn't look like a policeman or private security guard. More slouching than standing, he had the look of a man who had been given the task of enforcing security against little more than the wind and the occasional stray bird or animal.

One of the doors swung open slightly and stood ajar for a moment before the wind blew it shut again. The sentry pulled himself upright, opened the door and peered inside. No footsteps could be heard in the stone entrance hall. The sentry stretched out his wand and muttered an incantation under his breath. The wand gleamed green for an instant then went out. Sighing, the sentry closed the door and returned to his post, glancing around once more for any sign of movement. After a few moments, he resumed his previous slouching position.

The entrance hall was as quiet as the grounds had been, but the door to the great hall was open. Low, clipped voices and echoing footsteps could be heard coming from inside. At the far end of the entrance hall was an archway, which led away into a corridor in darkness. Under the archway, the ancient walls of the castle were swallowed up in grimy shadow. The corridor wall was dank to the touch, scored and pitted, and crumbling slightly, the palimpsest on the walls marking the passing of decades and endless acts of minor vandalism perpetrated by generation upon generation of students. No rune could be made out among the markings, no sign pointing the way to one of the castle's myriad hidden passages, some mapped, others lost. And yet in the dark under the archway, at the touch of something that could not be seen, a fiery glow gleamed for an instant.

* * *

Minerva McGonagall looked about her with a melancholic eye. A pale, golden light illuminated the Headmistress's Office at Hogwarts, but a glance out through the tall windows would reveal only a warm but opaque light crossed by dim, fleeting forms and shadows. _A nice piece of magic, that was._ In any case, there wasn't much comfort to be had from seeing what was actually outside the windows. She sat at the desk, the Headmistress's Desk, and her eyes skipped over the papers and devices that lay there. But there was no school business to be dealt with; Minerva McGonagall was a headmistress without students. They had all been sent home, evacuated in time thank goodness, and she had remained behind, a ghost walled up in her office.

She reached into her desk and took out an orb. It was seemingly made of a dull metal and about the size of the crystal balls formerly used by Miss Trelawny in divination class. She wiped a spot of dust from its surface and looked more closely at it. _Let's see what they're up to today. The usurpers._ After a few moments the upper torso of a man became visible in the orb, distorted as if seen through a fish-eye lens. The man was seated, peering through thick glasses at the papers on his desk. _He looks almost normal, this muggle._ She had grown used to seeing the face of this official, or whatever he was. He was her replacement, in a way, having been put in charge of the running of Hogwarts since the day the witch-hunters had arrived. The orb enabled her to watch him as he did his rounds around the empty school, work at his desk, issue orders to his staff, some of them Muggles, others actually former students of the school itself. Sometimes he himself received orders by telephone, and occasionally she had caught him speaking with his wife, negotiating with her to visit him more often.

They had been warned by Patronus the day the witch-hunters came. No plan to defend the school was put into operation: _how do you defend yourself from the eyes of the world?_ When the Ministry fell, the enchantments that kept the wizarding world secret ceased to function, leaving Hogwarts School suddenly visible to the eyes of muggles. With Hogwarts suddenly standing in the open, a great hulking castle by the side of a loch, the only solution was to scuttle away and find somewhere to hide. The children were sent home, house by house, out of a little used back gate and into the surrounding hills. Owls were dispatched to inform parents, calling them to collect their children from hastily arranged portkeys positioned at remote locations in the surrounding forests and moors. The aim was to get everyone out of Hogwarts in the general confusion, before the witch-hunters arrived. And when they did arrive, they were followed by the muggle police, the muggle press and all those who just wanted to gawp at the strange building that had suddenly materialised in the Highlands. The evacuation had been a success. It was Hogwarts' remote location that had helped them more than anything. When the first witch-hunters reached the castle, accompanied by wizards who for some unfathomable reason had decided to work for the muggles, they found it empty. And as helicopters landed in the grounds and the usurpers took possession of the building, the staff of Hogwarts watched from the Forbidden Forest.

* * *

It was about time for the superintendent to make his daily search of the school for the Headmaster's Office. Strangely enough, no one had been able to locate it, not even those among the superintendent's staff who had been students at the school. They knew where it was supposed to be, where it had been when Hogwarts operated under cover of magic, but now it was invisible, vanished like the Room of Requirement, which was also the subject of feverish searches. And as the superintendent of Hogwarts had said: _until we find the missing parts of this school, we can't be certain that there are no undesirables still on the premises_. He was quite right, of course. Undesirables, Minerva McGonagall first and foremost, went about the premises at will.

That grim afternoon in early November as the staff of Hogwarts crouched in the Forbidden Forest, a dusting of snow already covering the grounds and the wind blowing up insistently from the Black Lake, they had been astonished when Professor McGonagall informed them that once everything had calmed down, she was going to go back to work in her office.

'Surely you're not going to give yourself up, Professor?' Hagrid had said.

'Certainly not!' she had said. 'I am merely going back to my office to get on with running the school.'

They had looked at her as if the strain of the day had driven her out of her wits. She wondered how to explain it to them. She suspected that it wouldn't help if she started by telling them that it was Professor Dumbledore himself who had given her the answer. Even though that was the truth.

Once the Patronus had arrived, and she had given orders for the school to be evacuated, Professor McGonagall had paced her office in a frenzy, readying herself for the task ahead and racking her brains as to whether there was any solution other than the order she had been forced to issue. The portrait of a sleeping Dumbledore hung on the walls of the Office, alongside the portraits of countless other headmasters.

'I bet you didn't see this coming!' she had apostrophised the portrait. The figure in the portrait opened an eye and smiled sadly at Professor McGonagall.

'Dear Minerva, even this was always a possibility.'

'What will happen to Hogwarts now?' cried Professor McGonagall. 'Will they burn it down? Or worse, will it become some sort of hotel and conference centre for muggles?'

'It's a lovely piece of architecture, that's for sure,' said Dumbledore's portrait, with a serenity that no living person could hope to exude. 'But unfortunately for any future muggle visitors to Hogwarts, I fear they will never get to see the whole of the castle.'

'Albus, you had better say what you mean right this instant!' cried Professor McGonagall, seizing on the hint the portrait had made.

The portrait smiled a waxen smile.

'Simply this,' said Dumbledore. 'Although there is no spell that can hide Hogwarts again from non-magical eyes while simultaneously erasing its memory from the minds of millions, the enchantments that kept the castle hidden are just one level of its concealment. But there are other, custom-made enchantments in place, put there for this very purpose. Just because Hogwarts is now visible to the world, it doesn't follow that this office, for example, is too.'

'Is that so?' said Professor McGonagall.

'You could stay here for months and no one would know. Trust an old portrait, Minerva.'

'That's all very well,' replied Professor McGonagall, who had spotted a flaw in the plan. 'But if I start apparating in and out of this office, these witch-hunters will soon be on to me.'

'Quite so,' replied the portrait. 'But there will be no need for you to do that. I don't want to sound immodest, but all you need to do is follow in my footsteps.'

'I'm afraid I haven't the nerves for riddles at the moment,' said Professor McGonagall curtly.

'Oh, I mean it quite literally,' said Dumbledore, who seemed to glance down from his portrait in the direction of the floor. Professor McGonagall followed the gaze of the eyes in the portrait and looked down at the floor. It was crisscrossed with glowing footprints.

'As you can imagine, in my time I covered a great deal of the castle on foot,' continued the still smiling portrait. 'In fact, I would think that there's scarcely a corner of the castle I haven't visited at some point.'

Rather circumspectly, Professor McGonagall reached out a black-booted foot from under her robes then stepped onto the nearest footprint. As she did so she smiled.

'Well, Albus,' she murmured. 'This Headmistress of Hogwarts hasn't been relieved of her duties after all.'

Since then she had been able to go back and forth between her office and the outside world, follow the fruitless searches of the castle for hidden entrances, and listen in on the conversations of the temporary caretakers of Hogwarts, all without detection. The discovery of this excellent technique was followed by other useful discoveries. In addition to the Headmaster's Office, Hagrid's house was found to have remained quite untraceable. The Room of Requirement, meanwhile, kept itself hidden, presumably of its own volition. The inexplicable untraceability of Hagrid's House meant that it was able to serve as a kind of headquarters, and even rudimentary accommodation for those members of staff who were reluctant to abandon Hogwarts. However, the problem of overcrowding and the rusticity of the accommodation were such that most preferred to find other places to stay. One exception was Neville Longbottom, whose attachment to Hogwarts was such that he had taken up near permanent residence in the pantry. As a result, Professor McGonagall, Neville and Hagrid had formed a kind of skeleton staff keeping watch over the school. Professor McGonagall covered the school itself, Hagrid the grounds and the Forbidden Forest, while Neville was the liaison with the outside world, often journeying across great swathes of the country to keep in touch with other members of staff and wizards.

And so they waited and kept watch over Hogwarts, reliant on Neville's information gathering and the occasional owl that still got through for news of the rest of the wizarding world. What the best course of action might be was unclear to them, but abandoning Hogwarts to the witch-hunters was out of the question. An entire winter had passed; conditions had been tough in Hagrid's snowbound hut, but the snows had not lasted into March. And from what they heard of it, the outside world was of little appeal. The staff members who journeyed on the outside spoke only of the hardships endured in trying to make their way in a world where even small acts of magic risked discovery, incarceration and something ominously referred to as 'regularisation'.

It even took some time for the full account of the failed defence of the Ministry to reach Hogwarts, the story gradually piecing itself together through the scraps of information that Neville and others brought them: hundreds of wizards imprisoned inside the Ministry, the scant defenders of the Ministry scattered across the country, some even gone abroad, Harry Potter in a coma, Hermione Granger missing.

* * *

The door of Hogwarts opened again, but this time so silently and minutely that the sentry didn't stir at his position. Equally imperceptible to him was the trail of glowing footsteps crisscrossing the main courtyard, leading out of the castle precincts and across the grassy incline in the direction of the Forbidden Forest. Minerva McGonagall glanced back at the sentry as she passed him, disappearing into the gloom of the grounds. _Not a former Hogwarts student, at least. I wonder where they got him from? From a foreign school of magic? From an ordinary Muggle school? Or was he taught by an itinerant?_ The utter futility of his task made her almost feel sorry for him. But then she pictured Harry in his hospital bed. _Four months it's been now._ Her throat constricted, any feeling of pity choked off, swallowed up not by anger but by fear, numbing her steps as she passed under the trees.


	49. The penitence of Lillian Herrick - Ch 2

2\. The surrounding sea

There must have been a shipwreck, he supposed. There had been no wreckage on the beach when he came to, no sign of the ship that must have brought him to the island, no memory even of the voyage itself. Still, he had felt no fear as he pulled himself up off the sand, salt on his lips and hair blowing in the keen wind.

A wind was always blowing there, bowing down the tall grasses that grew all over the island and making the trees stoop. A narrow ridge ran down its length like a protruding spine, dividing it into windward and leeward sides. The sky was often filled with grey clouds. Sometimes the wind whipped up to a gale, the clouds went black and storms crashed overhead. From his shelter, it felt as if the storm would tear the island out of the seabed and sink it like a ship.

At the northernmost point of the island stood a lighthouse, its stark concrete walls rising over the rocks. He regarded himself as its custodian, although the light worked automatically and seemed to require no maintenance. The lowest level was a circular room, roughly hewn in concrete, dimly lit by a pair of tiny windows. But there was something about its perfect roundness that made him shun it. He preferred a small wooden outbuilding that lay on lower ground, just below the base of the lighthouse. The building lay in a grassy hollow, sheltering it from the incessant winds passing overhead. A copse of bowed trees lay close to his shelter, their branches reaching out towards its timbered roof. Beneath the trees a cool spring gushed out of the rocks and ran away down towards the sea. On days with cool sunshine, when the clouds were smaller and chasing across the sky, he would sometimes lie beneath the trees, listening to the rushing of the water from the spring. When the storms came, he would lie on his back on his little bunk and look up the low wooden ceiling. His shelter was so small that it seemed to be crouching on the ground, gathered around him like a driftwood blanket.

The light rotated relentlessly from the lighthouse's uppermost floor, accessed by a spiral staircase. To the south, the narrow, green island spread out before him before dwindling to a rocky promontory that disappeared back into the sea. On clearer days, he thought he could make out another shoreline, which faded away into obscurity to east and west. To the north, he could see only empty sea. No boat ever docked in the bay below. But sometimes, from his vantage point by the light, a vessel seemed to pass in the distance, its lights shining bleakly through fog or night. Sometimes, when the vessel seemed nearer, he thought he could make out a small figure standing on the deck, looking out at him, or perhaps just looking to the light.

Harry Potter's eyes were open. They seemed to be surveying a distant point, far beyond the walls of the room he lay in and the hospital in which he was a patient. From time to time his head moved slightly, as if in response to some remote stimulus. Sometimes his lips moved, but no sound could be heard. Outside the window the late winter sun was shining weakly, and the trees in the hospital grounds were still bare.

A young woman sat at his bedside, holding his hand. As he seemed to be stirring, she got up quietly and leaned over him, pulling her mousy hair back so that it didn't hang down over his face. Through grey, mournful eyes she surveyed his face for any sign of movement. He was still again, but his green eyes continued to look beyond her into the distance.

A nurse entered the room. The mousy-haired woman let go of his hand, stood up quickly and stepped away from the bed, lingering by the wall while the nurse checked the machines to which he was connected. The nurse quickly finished her checks, giving the young woman a wistful smile before she left the room.

Once they were alone again, she returned to his side, clasping his hand in hers once again. Once again she looked into his eyes, scarcely blinking, searching out his pupils until they were locked onto hers.

_Harry, are you there_?

All she could hear was the sound of her own breathing. But as she listened, she could also distinguish his breathing, somewhere deep below hers.

_Harry, come up to the surface_.

This time she could hear what sounded like indistinct words being spoken, deadened as if through murky water.

_This is Serena speaking to you,_ she said._ Serena Lynch. Maybe you're wondering why I'm here, and not Caius or Hermione. Well, things are still a bit of a mess out here, so they're having to keep a low profile. But they're working on how to make things better, so things will be ok when you wake up. Do you remember them, Harry?_

_I remember, _came the response at last.

_Won't you come to the surface_? Serena repeated.

_Not now_.

_Are you somewhere nice_?

_Yes_, came the reply.

_Describe it to me_.

_A warm breeze is blowing and the clouds are rushing overhead_.

_That sounds nice_.

Whenever he spoke, it was always the same place that he described.

_Are you by the sea_?

_The sea surrounds me_.

The door opened again and she looked away from him. After the darkness of his pupils, the hospital room seemed overly bright. Another nurse came in and gently told her that visiting time was over. She nodded and gathered up her coat and bag. When she reached the door, she turned back for a moment. Harry was quiet in his bed, his gaze distant again.

The door to his room was marked with the name _Harry Swift_. That was the name Caius had registered him under when he had brought him to the hospital, an innocent bystander hit by stray bullets in the Witch Riots, as the press had called them. The staff on the ward knew Serena as Harry's sister, who visited him every day. She didn't mind doing it; she had even volunteered. The Coven of the White Tooth was still operational; one of its most important tasks was keeping watch over Harry Potter. In the four months that had passed no witch-hunters had come calling.

She exited the hospital through a side entrance. In front of the hospital wing that housed Harry's ward there was a small grassy space dotted with sparse trees and the occasional bench. She scanned the area quickly, looking for any sign that someone might be on the watch for her, but she could make out only the occasional patient or visitor sitting on the benches, eating a sandwich or staring quietly into space. She probed deeper, but could detect no sense of watchfulness, no threat keeping itself out of sight. She crossed the green space quickly and went out through the tall metal gates.

* * *

Rings, earrings and expensive watches filled the display in the shop window. _Just a woman looking at some jewellery, what could be more normal_? Serena glanced over her shoulder, quickly scanning the pedestrians and the shop fronts on the other side of the street. _Always check the shops on the other side of the street_. Those had been Hermione's instructions to her, scribbled down on a piece of paper on the 23rd floor before she left. _That's how I got caught_, Hermione had written in brackets.

Serena could have used magic to look, but it would have been too powerful a charm. _It would have been detected_. In any case, she had a feeling that at that moment at least, no one was watching. But it was easy for her to sense a hostile mind if it was nearby. _Like an undercurrent to my magic_, that was how she had described it when Hermione had asked her, in the apartment in Paris overlooking the Montparnasse Cemetery. The apartment they had all wanted to get out of as quickly as possible. _Unseen and undetectable_: the Array had never yet detected her power when she used it. That was why she was the best person to keep watch over Harry. She could speak to him, reach him right down there on his island, without fear of discovery.

Satisfied that no one was watching, she stepped away from the window display, allowing herself one last look at a pair of silver earrings she rather liked the look of but couldn't afford. Next to the shop window was a narrow doorway, slightly shabby in comparison with the gleaming exterior of the jewellery shop. _Mr Zurabian's new investment_, Armin had called it. Armin was a nice guy, Serena reckoned. She had never seen this Mr Zurabian.

She took out a key that she kept shut in her purse and unlocked the door. Beyond it lay an alleyway open to the elements, which led through to a small, dingy rear courtyard surrounded by tall, soot-blackened walls. The only way out of the yard other than turning and going back down the alley was through the backdoor that presumably led into the back of the shop. Serena knocked at the door. At some point it had been given a bright red paint job, most likely in a previous decade. 'Who is it?' came a muffled male voice after a few moments. 'Serena,' Serena replied. The door opened and Armin Vlaminck ushered her inside.

_Please keep an eye on Armin Vlaminck and his occult bookshop_, Hermione had written on her instructions for Caius and his coven. _Mr Morley knows it and saw me there once. And anyway, shops like Armin's will probably be targets from now on_. Serena followed Armin up the stairs to the flat over the shop. The occult bookshop had closed down almost immediately after the raising of the Ministry of Magic, quickly replaced by the smart, expensive jewellery shop that also belonged to Mr Zurabian.

'Caius and Osian are here,' said Armin as they reached the top of the stairs. The landing was piled with boxes, the last traces of the old shop, ready to be shipped abroad.

There were more boxes and crates in the living room. Apparently the flat had always looked like that, but with Armin's move imminent, the clutter was greater than ever. But the biggest change was the addition of a huge and ever changing blueprint of the Ministry of Magic taking up an entire wall in the living room, sketched with all its myriad floors, wings, towers and shafts on a huge expanse of white paper. Every last detail that could be gleaned on the Ministry had been included. At one corner, Caius Hanmer was busy rubbing out a row of offices and pencilling in a blank wall in their place. Sitting cross-legged directly beneath the map was Osian Kendrick. Osian had ash blonde hair and a pallid look about him, as if he never saw the sunlight. He was scribbling furiously, adding a contorted appendage that snaked its way down King Street. Beyond the outer limits of the Ministry, the dense street network of central London faded away into what was left of the wallpaper. The main body of the Ministry was a mass of names, scribbled on every floor, marking every office. Inscribed next to each name was either a cross, indicating that the tenant of the office was at large, or an asterisk, indicating that the person remained incarcerated in the Ministry, 'at the Witchfinder's pleasure', as Caius called it.

'How is he?' said Caius, turning to greet Serena. Osian gave Serena a quick nod and continued with his work.

'Down on the island,' replied Serena softly.

'Did he speak?'

'For a little bit, until the nurse came in. He wasn't too far down today. I reached him quite easily.'

'That's good,' said Caius.

'Is he any closer to waking up?' Armin asked. 'Or no difference?'

'Sometimes he's closer, other times he's farther away. I don't want to say that any day now he's going to wake up, but I don't think he's going to fade away either.'

'That's something,' said Caius, running his hand through his matted dark hair.

'How long has it been now?' asked Armin.

'Three months, three weeks and six days.'

'It'll be spring soon,' Caius murmured, half-glancing out of the back window, where he could see the bare branches of a tree splaying out of a neighbouring yard. 'What will he be like if he does wake up?'

'He's strong,' replied Serena. 'One of these days he'll be up and walking again. We shouldn't lose hope. Tell Hermione not to lose hope.'

Caius nodded.

'I'll tell her,' he said after a short pause. 'I'm just not sure I'll get a reply.'

He walked to the front window and looked out over Exmouth Market below. _She doesn't go by the name Hermione_. The last time he had seen her, she had sat opposite him for half an hour in a train station restaurant halfway up the West Coast Line, delivering very precise information on the layout of various sections of the Ministry while he added them to a miniature version of his map. Her tone had been offhand, the expression on her face one of studied boredom. She even managed to chew gum through the first ten minutes. At almost no point did she let down her disguise. The air of vacuous insularity was virtually impenetrable. He would hardly have recognised the girl sitting in front of him if it hadn't been for two very expressive looks that made it through the thick layer of make-up, one a fierce scolding look in response to his flippant and slightly overloud remark 'You're some method actor', and a second, sadder look that accompanied the question 'How is he?' He remembered looking more than once at her immaculately sculpted fingernails, thinking how strange they looked on her, and the sad eyes scrutinising him through the mascara and eye shadow.

'I'm leaving for Garmon's tomorrow,' he said as he turned from the window. 'So is Osian.' Serena nodded anaemically. Armin had his laptop balanced on his knees and was peering at the screen. Osian didn't look up from his work.

'Who's coming down to replace you?' Serena asked.

'Elijah and Elen,' Caius replied.

That was the schedule: Serena stayed permanently in London, while the others came down in shifts to work on the map of the Ministry and do low-key surveillance work. Caius was putting up most of them at his parents' house, plus an overspill at his sister's farm in the hills. One day in January there had been a scare that the witch-hunters were on their way to Garmon's, forcing them all to decamp to Braith's farm, but it had been a false alarm. They had no clear plan: it was all preparation for the day when an opportunity presented itself to change things.

'Come and have a look at this,' said Armin, looking up from his computer screen. Caius and Serena came and looked over his shoulder. On the screen was an internet news article. The headline read: _No progress on emptying Sorcery Square_. Sorcery Square was what people called the vast square that had formed when the Ministry of Magic rose to the surface. The name had since attached itself to the Ministry building itself. Hundreds of wizards were still kept inside, those who had refused to be 'regularised'. That was the main concern of the authorities: registering all the wizards and witches and getting them to sign a sworn statement not to use magic. Some wizards had agreed, others had refused, and so they were being kept inside the Ministry until someone figured out what to do with them. And so the Ministry building had become a kind of giant detention centre, placed under the control of a hastily established official body, the Agency for Magical Affairs, AMA for short. The problem, as Caius, Serena and the rest of the Coven knew only too well, was that Robert Marchelow, Stephen Morley's second-in-command, had somehow been appointed as the Deputy Director of the Agency and was directly in charge of overseeing the wizards incarcerated in Sorcery Square. And while the regular police guarded the exterior of the building, the interior was the domain of Mr Marchelow and the 'safe wizards' who served as wardens.

'Look here,' said Armin, pointing at the screen.

'_According to Stephen Morley, the Head of the Safe Magic Campaign, consensus on the legal status of the so-called Sorcery Square and the wizards inside it was still some way off. Only once consensus is reached will AMA, together with the Safe Magic Campaign and other interested parties, begin discussions on how to go about releasing the imprisoned wizards into the community. 'Our priority is ensuring that these people are treated as humanely as possible in the meantime,' Mr Morley stressed._'

'I bet it is,' Caius remarked.

'_On that point there is complete agreement with AMA and I have every confidence in the agency to ensure that this happens. 'However,' Mr Morley added, 'quite another problem is how to regularise the unknown numbers of wizards and witches still at large.'_

_The main concern is what will happen when the wizards are finally released into the community. How will the authorities manage to prevent a repeat of the violence and vigilantism that erupted last November?'_

'You mean the violence stirred up by the Witchfinder and his friends,' Caius added. _You never know who might be about to accuse you of looking like a wizard_. _It's worse in the small towns_. _Like where Hermione lives._ Instinctively he raised his hand and touched his chest. Through the material of his jacket he could just make out the outline of his wand. He looked out of the back window again, above the line of buildings and up at the sky. As impassive and empty as it seemed, he had only to take out the wand and perform some little act of magic, and his position would be recorded by the Array. And then, sooner or later, someone would accost him on the street, push him into a car or a building and he would be taken in for questioning. It had happened often in the days and weeks after the raising of the Ministry, a mundane occurrence until the wizards and witches still at large learned to do without magic.

'Armin,' Serena suddenly said. 'Go and look out of the window. See if you can see someone in the street checking out this place.'

Armin put down his laptop and crossed to the window. He lifted the grey net curtain for a moment and peered out for a few seconds. Then he let the curtain drop and stepped away from the window.

'There's a girl standing in a doorway on the other side of the street,' he said. 'I think I might have seen her before.'

'She's a witch,' said Serena in a cold voice, not moving from her seat.

'One of Morley and Marchelow's safe wizards, you mean,' said Caius.

'Yes. The one good thing is that she wasn't here when I arrived. I would have sensed her.'

'Any idea when you think you saw her?' said Caius, looking at Armin.

'Not really. A week ago, maybe.'

'If you're right that might be in our favour,' said Caius. 'It might mean that she has more than one place to do surveillance on.'

Armin sat down heavily on the sofa and folded his arms.

'I can't leave this place soon enough,' he muttered. 'After all these years …'

'Harry will be pissed off when he wakes up,' said Caius.

Armin looked up at him and smiled grimly.

'He probably will. Sorry to be kicking you out too,'

'It was only ever a temporary place for us,' Caius replied. 'We'll find somewhere else, eh Osian?'

Osian had got up from the map of the Ministry and was leaning against the back wall.

'We'll have to be careful getting this out of here,' he replied, jabbing his finger in the direction of the map.

'We'll sort something out,' said Caius. 'It'll probably have to go back to my parents' house. And I think we'd better start doing some surveillance on her,' he added, with a nod towards the street window.

'I'll go and take a look, shall I?' said Osian.

'Yeah, a quick one.'

'That's all I need.'

That was true. As well as being very good at drawing, Osian had a photographic memory. Without magic, skills like that had become very valuable.

'I've had a look at her,' said Osian, returning from the window.

'You'll leave a sketch for Elijah and Elen, yeah?'

Osian nodded silently.

'They can't have detected us doing magic,' he added.

'No, quite,' said Caius. _But the odd tiny bit of magic has been done. You couldn't help it slipping out sometimes._ 'Unless the Array's getting more powerful.'

'Isaac would have told us if it had,' said Osian.

'If he knows,' added Serena.

No one had ever seen the Array, knew what the device looked like or even where it was kept, though it was suspected to be kept somewhere inside the Ministry of Magic. The various attempts at mapping the Ministry all included a notional blank space marking where the Array might be. '_For all we know, it could be the size of a CD player, or a matchbox even_,' Isaac Edwards had told them back in Muirton Tower. If it could be found and decommissioned, the magical community could begin to regroup and rebuild. Until then, they were in limbo.


	50. The penitence of Lillian Herrick - Ch 3

3\. Natalie Grey

She woke in the dark for the third time that night, dawn nowhere in sight. She slid a hand out from under the duvet, reaching for her phone, but its screen was mute and dark. She thrashed about from left to right, trying to find a comfortable position from which she could drift back to sleep, but her back and limbs were too taut. Finally she gave up trying to keep her eyes closed and looked up at the dark ceiling of her room. There was a dim light at the window, filtering in through the half-closed curtains. But there was nothing worth seeing.

_At least when I open my eyes, I can see a light at my window, the real light of day_. She closed her eyes again, speaking the incantations in the faintest of whispers.

A rocky shoreline stretched out before her, left and right as far as she could see. A wind was blowing up off the sea, which churned grey below her, as if in reflection of the sky. She could feel her heart beating fast, as if she had run to the spot where she stood. She turned her head for a moment: she was standing on a narrow strip of wind-swept grass, behind which a vast forest choked out all that lay beyond. She turned back to the sea and gazed down into the brink, almost allowing herself to fall into the emptiness below. The wind swirled around her but she kept her balance. Some way out into the sea she could make out an island, green and dotted with trees, grey gravel shores rising up out of the waves. She knew that she had to reach the island, but now when it came to it, she wasn't sure how. She leaned forward, but instead of crossing to the island, she found that she couldn't step off the cliff, as if an invisible screen was blocking the way and preventing her from falling into the sea below.

_Why can Serena Lynch reach him and I can't? Is it something to do with this ridiculous charade I'm living out? _But dropping her disguise wasn't an option. Not yet anyway.

She looked again out to the island, serene and inaccessible in the surrounding sea. Through the grey clouds that hung over it, she thought she could make out a distant light, blinking on and off at intervals.

She hadn't had a message from Caius for days. But the messages often got delayed. The magic-blocking enchantments that had been spread all over the country sometimes interfered with mobile phone signals. The mobile phone companies had even brought some court case, but she didn't know the details. Or, more specifically, the girl called Natalie Grey who worked on a supermarket till in the town of Unham didn't. Natalie Grey wasn't interested in the wizards locked up in the Ministry of Magic, or how many wizards there were still in Britain. She just wanted her text messages on time.

Caius always sent the same message, just the words: _He's ok_. Having said that, there were only two possible variations on it: _he's dead_ or _he's awake_. She had no idea what she would do if she received either of those two messages. _He's ok_ meant she could go on with her life for now, waiting for something to happen, something that would force her to do something. She glanced again around the darkened walls. For an instant, she thought she could dimly make the shape of a circle on the wall. _Nothing from Lillian. What is she waiting for?_ _Does she regard me as not yet ripe for plucking? Or am I no longer of interest to her? _She pulled the duvet back around her and lay still in the darkness, willing the comforting banality of Natalie Grey to return, or, failing that, for sleep to put all thoughts out of her mind.

* * *

Rain thudded dully against her bedroom window as she put on her work clothes. The tiredness, the repeated checking of the clock, the resentment at having to go to work, those were normal thoughts to be having on a cold, dreary morning at the end of winter. At night she was vulnerable, impatient for the events that had been set in motion to progress more quickly, but those kinds of thoughts weren't allowed during the day, in public, at work, on the streets, even in the flat with Eve. Those were Hermione's thoughts, not Natalie's. And it was Natalie who shared the flat with Eve, who drifted through shift after shift on the checkout and sometimes went out clubbing on a Friday night. Hermione had been left behind in a field, clutching her wand like an iron age corpse clutching a sword, but sometimes she came to Unham, bringing with her a gnawing unease, travelling by night to sit beside a coma patient, or standing on a sea cliff under a red sky and looking out at an island.

_This is your face_, she thought with mild amusement as she looked in the mirror that hung on her bedroom wall. _What's the matter? Don't you like how you look? _Her makeup had been toned down for work, but it still dictated the contours of _Natalie's_ face. At least they didn't make her tie back her hair at work, she had asked her supervisor the first day and she had said not to worry. She brushed a wave of her dyed black hair down so that it half-covered her left eye. _Why are you so obsessed with straightening your hair_, Eve had asked her once. _It's all right for you_, she had replied, _your hair is dead straight anyway. I hate how thick and bushy mine is_. A perfectly reasonable answer: Eve hadn't asked her again. Nor did she ask her about the constant dyeing and highlighting of her hair, or the regular trips to the nail bar, even though it was obvious she didn't quite approve. Eve didn't even like going clothes shopping in the town centre much. _I don't either, Eve_.

She closed the door to the flat carefully when she left: her flatmate was still asleep after a late shift at the petrol station the night before. It wasn't really a morning to be out in: cold, rain, wind and scarcely light. She looked enviously at the lights on in the row of houses opposite, put up her umbrella and walked down the road. At least it was only ten minutes to work.

_The days all merge into one_, she often said if anyone asked her about work, and the day's shift differed little from the hundred or so that preceded it: the queues at the checkout lengthening and shortening, the brief moments of calm staring off into the supermarket's vast interior, the muscle pains from sitting too tensely in the same position for too long, the chit chat with the others in the staff room, the feeling of solidarity with some of them, the desire to have nothing to do others. At least Nasreen had been working the till next to her; she always made the days more bearable. _She's wasted in this place_, she sometimes thought, not sure if it was Hermione or Natalie doing the thinking.

She was a satisfactory employee in every respect: efficient without being so efficient that she made her colleagues look bad, quiet without being so quiet as to incur her colleagues' distrust, friendly without belonging to any one faction, courteous to her superiors without being obsequious, pretty enough without arousing jealousy, and of sound and reasonable opinion on any subject. She exhibited no particular sign of either great intelligence or great stupidity, and expressed no ambition either to make her way up the ladder or to look for employment elsewhere. _Why would you want to move to this town _the woman in HR had asked her, quite reasonably, when she told her she had just moved to Unham. _Oh, my boyfriend's from round here_. It was as good an answer as any. Her identity documents and references had all been in order: she had invested in a fake muggle identity through the usual channels on the off-chance not long after returning from France. How useful a piece of forward thinking that had become grimly clear when Caius had told her how much they cost on the black market.

The supermarket occupied one end of the ground floor of the shopping centre that crouched balefully in the town centre, its flat, oblique brick walls rising up over the surrounding streets. She always liked to get outside for a walk during her break, but the driving rain and cold had limited it to five minutes down the High Street, as far as the Italianate town hall that was almost the only grand building left on it. She didn't even manage her usual walk around the churchyard. Instead she wandered the main avenue of the shopping centre, browsing a couple of clothes shops and checking her reflection in the odd shop window, a look of steely disinterest bolted to her face to ward off any remarks or leering.

Unham had once been a medieval market town, but the only building that dated back that far was the gothic church hidden away in a churchyard behind the High Street. The rest had been engulfed by Victorian industry and dissected by the railways, hit hard by the decline of the same industries and all but submerged under a wave of post-war town planning. A few of the older buildings survived, standing silently with some remnant of dignity on the dreary streets.

'_Has there been any trouble here?_' she had asked the woman in the pub on the day she arrived in town.

'_You mean with the witches?_' the woman had replied, a derisive sort of laugh slipping out of her mouth as she spoke. '_I don't reckon this is the sort of place they'd live. Some goths got chased out of the town centre by some local lads, but that's about all_.'

_So much the better_, she had thought to herself as she sat on her own in a booth and sipped a half-pint of cider.

The rain had turned to sleet when she got outside at the end of her shift. It was swirling around in the wind and melting immediately on the grey pavements. It had got noticeably colder since the morning. She quickened her pace, heading out of the town centre as fast as she could. She went past the bus station, over the dual carriageway that wrapped around the town centre and into her neighbourhood, a grid of densely packed redbrick terraces that climbed a nondescript and nameless urban hill, beyond it a sprawl of post-war estates.

Her heart began to beat faster at the sound of her phone vibrating in her inside pocket. She reached into her pocket and read the message:

'_Get me some cigs? Ta_.'

She slipped the phone back into her pocket, her heart returning to its normal rhythm. A little further up the main road that led away from the town centre was a convenience store where she could pick up the requested cigarettes. She knew what brand Eve smoked. Almost disappointingly, the sleet had turned back into rain and was starting to come down harder, so she was glad to get out of it, at least for a couple of minutes. The inside of the shop smelled of reheated bakery products. As she stood in the queue, she couldn't help but glance at the newspaper and magazine racks. '_Witch on town centre rampage_' read the headline on one of the newspapers. She pulled the paper out of the rack, unfolded it and turned quickly to the relevant page, glancing at the person next to her in the queue to see if he was paying any attention to her. '_Wiltshire town shocked by witch's spell spree … witch causes mayhem in packed shopping street … four people injured, shops and buildings damaged … witch finally subdued by local public protection group …_' She hastily folded up the paper and crammed it back onto the shelf, bought the cigarettes and breezed out of the shop. _Chase End was only a few miles from the town mentioned in the newspaper article._

She passed the bus stop on the main road round the corner from her street. An unhealthy-looking man of about 20 in a tracksuit eyed her slowly and deliberately as she walked past. She hurried on, making no eye contact. As she turned the corner onto her street she glanced back. The man was still propped against the bus stop, apparently not looking in her direction. _Could he be a wizard, or a witch-hunter_? He looked more like somebody from one of the 'public protection groups' that had formed after the raising of the Ministry.

Whenever she glanced at the tired, grey faces she passed on the street, she wondered if there were wizards among them. Even in Unham, did wizards shop in the supermarkets, drink in the pubs, dance in its nightclubs?

Thankful to be out of the cold and the rain, she shook her umbrella on the beige-carpeted stairs that led to the upstairs flat. Her flat-share was on the first floor of a converted redbrick terraced house. They had two bedrooms and a living room, tastefully decorated with magnolia walls and beige carpets, and a galley kitchen and bathroom, all done in the same glossy white tiles.

Her flatmate was propped up on the living room sofa watching television, her grey eyes following the images on the screen with a look somewhere between boredom and amusement. She tucked one side of her pale blonde hair behind her ear, revealing a row of studs. Natalie reached into her bag, took out the pack of cigarettes and tossed them across the room. When they landed on the sofa next to Eve she gave no sign of being startled.

'Thanks awfully dear, you're a lifesaver …' said Eve, picking up the cigarettes and reaching for her lighter with the other hand. 'Or shouldn't you be trying to convince me to stop slowly killing myself?'

Natalie gave Eve's remark the smirk it deserved.

'Had a good day?'

'Not really. How about you?'

'Of course not.'

They both laughed and Natalie went into the back bedroom. Tiredness pervaded her limbs as she changed out of her work clothes. She had forgotten to open the curtain that morning and the room languished in shadow. She crossed to the window and drew the curtain, glancing out through the smudged glass. Her room overlooked a small yard with mossy paving tiles, a battered brick wall and, beyond it, a narrow, muddy alleyway that ran along the backs of the terraces. There was no one in the alley in the deepening dusk. She stepped away from the window and went back into the living room.

Eve was halfway through her second cigarette when Natalie dropped down onto the sofa next to her. She was skinny and petite and a few years younger than Natalie. Draped on the sofa in a black hooded sweater and grey leggings and with no make-up on, she had a rather washed out appearance, her nose ring the only sign of the spiky alternative look she usually presented to the outside world. The girl called Natalie Grey who had answered her ad looking for a flatmate had obviously seemed more conventional than Eve would have liked, but since the girl with pink hair who had preceded her had run out of money and moved out without paying her last month's rent, she was prepared to let that slide. In any case, she had soon found her new flatmate to be less superficial than appearances had suggested. '_I thought you were going to be some sort of bimbo, when you came to look round the flat_,' Eve had cheerfully told her a couple of weeks after she had moved in. '_And now what do you think I am?_' Natalie had asked her in turn, slightly apprehensive of what her reply might be. They probably looked an odd pair in the street. '_You're sort of cool,_' Eve had said. '_But you still look a bit like something out of the window of Topshop_.' It had been a pleasant surprise for Eve when she noticed how she was starting to influence her new flatmate's tastes in clothing and music. It had helped bring them closer together. Strictly speaking, since Natalie's entire identity was invented, there was no way of betraying it. '_Some people sell out,'_ Eve had remarked with satisfaction. '_You might be the first person I've ever met who's selling in.'_ It had come as something of a surprise to her to learn that there was something called industrial music, but she had decided to try and get something out of it nevertheless. To her surprise, she found it fitted her current mood quite well.

'Not witches again, I'm sick of the sight of them,' said Natalie when she saw what Eve was watching. She just had time to read the caption: '_I was a secret witch_' and catch a glimpse of a young woman tearfully confessing to a sympathetic-looking talk show host before Eve had changed the channel. The young witch on the talk show had looked vaguely familiar to her.

'That more to your taste?' asked Eve.

A television presenter was walking admiringly around a smartly renovated rustic interior.

'It'll do.'

Under the sound of the television, a low rumble of muffled loud music could be heard coming from downstairs.

'Mike-os is in then,' said Natalie.

Mike-os lived in the flat downstairs. He reminded her of Caius Hanmer, if he had been a few years older and somewhat further down the road to ruin.

'Not surprising as he doesn't have a job,' came Eve's reply.

Since Eve didn't have a shift that night, it would be an evening in. Evenings in with Eve were what Natalie enjoyed most, although she was careful not to seem too keen to stay in. So she was always up for a night out, even in Unham, where an evening in the town centre was likely to result in getting leered or shouted at while trying to avoid the fights and puddles of vomit. Fortunately they couldn't afford to go out that much.

Neither of them knew much about cooking, but Natalie prepared a quick bowl of pasta and pesto that they ate in front of the early evening television.

'So do you want to do something this weekend?' said Natalie as they put their plates in the sink.

'You like _doing things_, don't you?' replied Eve, slightly disapproving as she exhaled the smoke from her after-dinner cigarette.

'Sometimes.'

Eve leaned against the door frame of the kitchen.

'Yeah, you're right. I don't mind.'

'It's Anathema this week, isn't it?' Natalie continued. Anathema was a fortnightly rock night that Eve had introduced her to. _It'a bit crap, but it's far better than anything else on offer round here_, had been her hard sell.

'Yeah, it will be. Mike-os will be there too I expect,' replied Eve, looking over at Natalie with a surreptitious grin.

'He'll be there because Zoe will be there,' Natalie replied.

Zoe was an old school friend of Eve's who was temporarily back at her parents' house after finishing university. Or at least she claimed it was temporary.

'Yeah right,' said Eve, her eyes narrowed with irony.

She knew Eve was joking. It was clear to everyone that Mike-os was waiting in the wings in the hope that Zoe would finish with her boyfriend. She had to admit that there was something a little more promising about Mike-os. Which in a way made it more of a shame that he was languishing unemployed in Unham, sponging money off his sister to supplement his dole money.

'She's welcome to him,' she replied in as nonchalant a voice as she could muster.

They were back on the sofa, one of Eve's CDs playing noisily on the stereo. Eve was leafing through a copy of the NME. 'Don't know why I bother buying this,' she muttered, half to herself. Natalie was staring into space, a paperback abandoned on the arm of the sofa. Eve had mocked it as chick-lit when Natalie borrowed it from the library, quite rightly as it was ghastly, but she had pressed on with it anyway.

'Oh, did I tell you?' said Eve, suddenly looking up. 'They're planning on renaming Anathema to Hex.'

'They aren't.'

'Seriously. Mike-os himself told me. Scab told him.'

Scab was the promoter and main DJ at the rock night, one of a number of alternative people around town with slightly dodgy nicknames. She had no idea what his real name was.

'Why?'

'It's a political gesture on Scab's part apparently. A nod of support for our poor witches and wizards.'

'Well that'll help them loads,' replied Natalie drily. 'If Scab's so political, isn't he worried about witch-hunters hassling him?'

'Up here? I think they've got better things to do than worrying about the name of some dismal rock night.'

'You've got a point there.'

Eve quickly lit another cigarette.

'See that's what comes of turning off the news every time you see it — you're not abreast of current affairs.'

'That's true. I'm not. But I don't really want to be either. I'm sick of the media going on about wizards and witches. If they'd just drop the subject, things might get back to normal.'

'I agree with you,' Eve replied. 'But most people wouldn't. Most people can't get enough of the subject. They love all this 'there are witches in our midst' stuff. They like to imagine that that neighbour they've always thought is a bit weird is a witch after all. They probably fantasise about witch-hunters turning up on their street to take them away. And at the very least, they like discussing what should happen to all those poor people in Sorcery Square.'

Natalie shivered.

'They should just let them all out.'

Eve smiled at her.

'Where do you get your opinions from? You never cease to surprise me with your hidden depths.'

Natalie gnawed her lower lip and started to play with her hair.

'What are you talking about? I don't have any hidden depths. I'm just a checkout girl. Anyway, why shouldn't they just let them out? That would be an end to it at least. Like I said, we could all go back to normal then.'

It was Eve's turn to shiver.

'You reckon thing would go back to normal? You weren't here when it all kicked off. There were some pretty nasty scenes around town.'

'But there weren't any wizards around here, were there?'

'Don't know. Don't think so. But that wasn't the point. Plenty of people wanted to find wizards living among us. And they were prepared to have a go at anyone who looked a bit funny on the off-chance.'

'Did you get …?'

'No, but I've heard of people who did …'

* * *

In her dream she was back in Chase End, in her office. Scrawled and crumpled papers were strewn across the floor. She kneeled down and tried to gather them together, put them back in order, but a persistent wind seemed to blow all around her, evading her outstretched hand. Finally she managed to grasp hold of one of the sheets of paper and turned it over. Instead of seeing her own handwritten notes there, she found herself looking at the photograph of her from the Witchfinder's flyer, her eyes burning fiercely, slightly crazed. She threw the paper away and tried to catch hold of one of the other sheets of paper dancing before her. She grabbed hold of a second, then a third, and a fourth, but the same image of her stared up at her from every page_. I thought I burned these_, she thought to herself again and again, each time with increasing desperation. _I'll have to burn them again_, she decided at last and conjured fire to her hands. The moment seemed to judder to a halt, the scattered pages motionless on the ground or hanging in the air. The palms of her hands burned and itched. Finally she gave in to the urge and fire flew from her hands. All around her pages were alight, dancing in the air, glowing as they shrivelled to cinders and filling the room with smoke. She stepped among the smouldering remains, stopping before the mirror on the wall, peering through the darkness at her reflection. But the reflection was that of Natalie Grey.

She awoke to the smell of burning. Her eyes flashed open, only to see little flames jumping up the curtains. She leapt out of bed and smothered the flames with a towel. Her heart leapt into her mouth when she heard a knocking at the door. _Have they found me so quickly?_ She thought. It was such a tiny piece of magic. _I didn't even intend it_.

'Nat? Are you ok? Is something burning in there?' came Eve's voice, muffled through the door.

'It's all right, it's nothing,' she called out in as calm a voice as she could muster.

'You sure?' said Eve.

'Positive,' she replied. 'You can go back to bed.'

'Ok,' said Eve, who sounded sleepy enough not to insist.

Silence returned to the flat, but she couldn't bring herself to get back into bed. _I could have set fire to the bed_, she thought, her heart still beating swiftly. She listened intently to the silence, for the sound of wizards apparating. But there was nothing. Carefully she lifted a singed curtain and looked out of the window. _I got away with it_. Scarcely a light shone in the row of houses that backed onto theirs and no figure looked up from the alleyway at her bedroom window. But still she wouldn't go back to bed.


	51. The penitence of Lillian Herrick - Ch 4

4\. Sorcery Square

_Minister for Witchcraft_. That was apparently what they called her now, back where she used to work. _They're just jealous that I was promoted_, Imogen Sontley had told herself when the news had filtered through to her. She could well imagine the sniggering conversations in the cafeteria or the corridors. She was better off out of there. She preferred her new job at the Agency for Magical Affairs, even if it did involve trying to disentangle the huge mess that had been caused by the discovery of the wizarding community.

Imogen Sontley had always considered herself above all a rational being: the obscure world of the spiritual had never held much appeal for her. The pursuit of knowledge had been her thing, ever since the first 'very good' had been written on her work in infant school. When confronted with the generalised passion among her classmates for monsters, ghosts and magic, her habitual response had been to turn her head with a disparaging sniff.

When Mr Fairburn, her former boss, had called her into his office to ask her if she was interested in a transfer to the new Agency for Magical Affairs, she had for an instant been tempted to resurrect the practice. But there she was, sitting in the foyer of AMA's new premises on Blackfriars Road in her soberest suit, waiting for her colleague Sioned to get out of the loo so they could go to a meeting in Sorcery Square itself. Her chestnut-coloured hair was drawn back in a tight ponytail, leaving her face fully exposed. Her mouth was small and pensive and her nose petite, which led her to often temper her grey eyes behind black-rimmed glasses, even though she wasn't all that short-sighted. She looked at her watch anxiously and half-smiled at Keeley on reception, uncrossing her legs as if she was about to get up.

She had resisted the temptation to ask Mr Fairburn what she had done to make them suggest a transfer. She had also resisted asking why on earth they thought she was an appropriate person to work in magical affairs. '_Jim Rance is going to head up the Agency_,' Mr Fairburn had told her. '_He's looking for good people, preferably ambitious people who don't mind getting their hands dirty. He's under no illusions about the fact that the Agency's remit is very complicated. But after a couple of years there, you'll pretty much be able to walk into any department you like_.' For a moment she had thought she could detect a kind of malicious glee in his smile. _Do you really want to get rid of me that much_?

Finally Sioned emerged from the bathroom. She was a tall girl, taller than Imogen, and with a more womanly figure, even though she was a trainee fresh out of university and scarcely two months in the job. She had large dark brown eyes and straight black hair that hung down on either side of a pinkish, heart-shaped face. Only at that moment she was looking a shade of white Imogen wasn't used to seeing on her.

'Are you feeling alright?' Imogen asked, standing up swiftly to meet Sioned as she crossed reception. The question didn't come out as sympathetically as she had intended.

'I'm fine,' said Sioned, quickly buttoning up her jacket and looking apprehensively at the bleak March weather visible through the building's glass door. Her hand was trembling slightly as she reached across and zipped her bag closed.

'You're not scared, are you?' said Imogen as the glass door swung open. This time she was careful to speak in a much lower voice so that Keeley couldn't hear them.

'A little bit,' said Sioned, brushing her hair out of her eyes. 'Don't you think it's a scary place?'

'I do,' Imogen agreed, reaching out her hand to hail a taxi. 'But it must be much worse for the people who've been stuck in there for the past four months.'

'_You know you're basically going to work for an agency that can achieve nothing_,' someone had told her, at her leaving do of all places, as he delivered a gust of Côtes-du-Rhône into her face and smirked as he waited to see if she had any come-back.

'_Look, I have no illusions that it's going to be difficult,_' she had replied to her thankfully soon-to-be-ex colleague. '_But if I can at least help get those people out of Sorcery Square, I will at least have some sense of achievement._'

'_Good luck with that'_, he had said. '_You know who's going to be Deputy Head of the Agency, don't you_?'

'_There's been no announcement yet_.'

'_No announcement _…' he had cackled. '_You'll see, Imogen, you'll see how it is_.'

'And Mr Marchelow's particularly scary,' Sioned added. A taxi pulled in.

'Umm … Sorcery Square please,' said Imogen. She felt faintly ridiculous giving such an address. But the cabbie knew what she meant. _It must be part of the Knowledge these days_.

'He is a bit forbidding, I grant you,' said Imogen once Sioned had slid into the backseat next to her. 'But to be honest, I've scarcely ever seen the man.'

That was true enough. Mr Marchelow's office in the AMA building was nearly always empty. Apart from attending the odd board meeting, he seemed to spend all of his time in Sorcery Square itself. But she knew who he was: Stephen Morley's man. No wonder Stephen Morley and his Safe Magic Campaign were present on every committee, running rings around the Agency. No wonder his safe wizards had free reign in Sorcery Square. '_Who do you propose should guard the wizards, Miss Sontley_?' Mr Morley had asked her in a meeting, a leering, triumphant smile on his face.

The taxi crossed Blackfriars Bridge to the north side of the river, granting an occasional glimpse, between the skyscrapers, of a black appendage of the Ministry of Magic complex glowering against the grey sky. The traffic moved slowly. The underground hadn't run properly in central London since the surfacing of the Ministry had displaced all the tunnels, severing track and cables.

The taxi swerved past some roadworks onto a narrow side street lined on both sides by tall, grey office buildings. Half way down, the street suddenly widened to accommodate a thin black tower that seemed to poke like a black steel finger out of the road surface. Coiled around the base of the tower was a tall metal fence topped with barbed wire. The road skirted around the little tower and continued on its way.

Soon Sorcery Square was before them. As they came out of the shadows of the side street, they were at once struck by a strange intermingling of daylight and what you could almost call the dazzling darkness of the Ministry building, about which a permanent black fog seemed to hang. Even after nearly four months, black vapour still seeped from its walls, said to be the accumulation of hundreds of years of protective enchantments, wafting away into the atmosphere. _Magical pollution_, some called it.

Metal fences and police checkpoints kept the Ministry separated from the crowds that jostled past, gawping at the building and snapping pictures as hawkers tried to sell them souvenirs from impromptu stalls on the outer edge of the square.

Imogen had set about learning the 'Magic' file with the same zeal she had devoted to every piece of homework, essay or dissertation that had ever been set for her. She hadn't set out with any particular sympathy towards wizards, though she thought it unfair that they should be kept locked up. Even if those who were still in there had refused to cooperate with AMA in any form whatsoever. But the more dealings she had with Mr Morley and his Safe Magic Campaign, the more she sympathised with the wizards.

The cab pulled up in the makeshift taxi rank on the edge of the square and Imogen and Sioned jumped out quickly. They crossed the open expanse of Sorcery Square, passing hurried office workers and strolling tourists pointing cameras at the Ministry of Magic building. The first security cordon ran around the perimeter of the building. Imogen announced their business through the open hatch of a small, prefabricated cabin to the security agent sitting inside. At the mention of Mr Marchelow, he hurriedly phoned inside. Once confirmation that they were expected came through, he handed them visitor stickers with a rather louche smile and pointed them towards the entrance of the building.

The first problem that Sorcery Square had presented to anyone wanting to try and enter it was that it was a building with no obvious street-level front door. When conventional building techniques failed to leave a scratch on the building, safe wizards had come and gouged an entrance into it with magic. And so the Ministry's main entrance was now a scorched hole blasted in the side of a building.

As they passed under the charred black arch Sioned gasped under her breath.

'Sorry,' she murmured. 'I didn't expect it to look like this.'

'Don't worry, this must just be the reception area,' said Imogen.

Mr Laceby had told her what to expect. She had hoped that he was going to accompany her to meet Mr Marchelow. Since he was the Director's assistant he had more authority than Imogen did as Integration Officer, but for some reason he had seemed unwilling. He had been inside before though, whereas she had only seen plans of the building, a vast labyrinth stretching over countless floors and sprawling in every direction, with a vast atrium at its centre. She had seen official photographs and video footage of its shiny black-walled corridors and of its inmates, the oddly dressed, slightly bewildered but otherwise seemingly healthy-looking witches and wizards sitting around in offices converted into dormitories. Or cells, depending which way you looked at it. She had also been able to scrutinise deliveries of food and medical supplies, but they seemed plentiful enough. And the only thing that left the Ministry, as far as she could tell, was whatever waste it produced, and there seemed to be nothing suspicious about it. For the rest, the Ministry remained shut.

The reception area was a low-ceilinged, utilitarian space with two dingy corridors leading off it to the left and the right. A kind of reception desk was rammed in close to the entrance, manned by a stern-faced, athletic-looking middle-aged woman with reddish cheeks and ash blonde hair tied up in a bun. She looked vaguely disgusted by her surroundings, which was fair enough, Imogen supposed. Beyond it, directly in front of them was a single metallic door, which looked like the entrance to a bank vault. _Or a prison_. But of course, the building was a prison. The metallic door was guarded by two security officers armed with submachine guns. Next to them stood a tall, waspish young man with a mop of curly, reddish hair. He had no gun, but instead held a wand at his side. _A safe wizard_. He wore a badge sewn onto his jacket: it depicted a wolf's head, the symbol that the Safe Magic Campaign had for some reason adopted as its emblem. She had seen it on the letterheads of correspondence from Mr Morley and emblazoned on the organisation's website and on the flyers, leaflets and other propaganda material it churned out. _Charming corporate logo_.

Imogen and Sioned presented themselves to the blonde woman at reception. She offered them the briefest of smiles, her blue eyes studying them dispassionately.

'Turn right,' she said curtly. 'Go right to the end of the corridor. The door in front of you will be the conference room. Mr Marchelow will be waiting for you there.'

They took the right-hand corridor, which led past a series of closed, unmarked doors. It was ill-lit and claustrophobic, its smooth grey walls in contrast with the rough-hewn ceiling.

'This can't be part of the Ministry,' whispered Sioned.

'I think this is what they call the administrative wing,' Imogen replied in a low voice.

'Is that right that they _carved_ it into the building using magic?' Sioned asked.

'I think so. My understanding is that they wanted a clear distinction between themselves and the prisoners,' said Imogen briskly.

'They must be on the other side of that door we saw back there,' remarked Sioned mournfully.

They had reached the end of the corridor. The door in front of them was more elaborate than the others. It was broad and made of what looked like mahogany. The wolf's head had been carved into the wood.

'This is it I suppose,' said Imogen. She glanced at Sioned.

'Ready?'

Sioned's face had gone from its previous shade of white to pink and flushed. She nodded quickly. Imogen knocked at the door. There was no immediate reply, she put her hand on the door handle and tried to open it. The door yielded and they went inside.

The room was long, subtly lit and sparsely furnished, apart from a long meeting table at its centre. Its ceiling and all its walls apart from one were made of some kind of smooth, dark, metallic material that made you feel as if you were in a shiny metal box. But the last wall, the left-hand wall, was made of glass, opening onto a much larger, but indistinct space.

At the far end of the table sat a tall, grave man, perhaps in his early forties. He had a longish black beard flecked with grey, a shock of black, wiry hair and wore slightly tinted glasses. He didn't rise when Imogen and Sioned entered the room, but summoned them to the table with a brief nod of his head.

'_Why does Mr Marchelow want to see me?_' Imogen had asked Mr Laceby.

'_He suspects you of being a sympathiser,_' Mr Laceby had replied. '_In his view you make too much noise about the conditions in Sorcery Square_. _You're too concerned about what happens to the people locked up in there and the people on the outside_.'

'_It's in our mission statement_,' she had protested.

Mr Laceby had looked very deliberately at her as if to gauge how serious she was.

'_Of course it is_,' he had said at last, no trace of irony in his voice.

'_And I am integration officer_,' she had added. '_What does he expect me to do_?'

'_Fail, I should think_.'

'Good morning, Mr Marchelow.' Imogen's voice seemed to echo around the dark metallic walls. 'Thank you for inviting me.'

She reached out her hand across the table. Mr Marchelow looked at the hand for a moment, as if he was rather put out by it, then reached out his and proffered a brief handshake.

'Good morning, Imogen,' he replied in a sombre voice. He turned and glanced at Sioned with a mournful, almost aggrieved expression on his face.

'And your name is Sioned Meyrick I believe,' he remarked.

'Yes sir, that's right,' said Sioned quietly.

Sioned opted not to try and shake Mr Marchelow's hand. He examined her coolly for a few instants without saying anything.

'I'll be taking minutes, if that's ok, sir,' said Sioned.

'By all means,' said Mr Marchelow.

Sioned reached into her bag, pulled out a notebook and pen and put them down on the table in front of her. The pen made a rather nasty, metallic noise when it came into contact with the table's surface.

'Won't you sit,' said Mr Marchelow. There was a trace of irritation in his voice, as if he had already been waiting some time for them to take their seats. As they did so, he clasped his hands together with great gravity and began to speak.

'Imogen,' he began. 'A sharp-witted person like you will undoubtedly have noticed that this office has one glass wall. What do you suppose is its purpose?'

'I suppose it enables you to see the prisoners,' Imogen replied. She was so taken aback by this introduction that she found herself speaking more curtly than she had intended.

'It does,' he replied, his mouth drawn very tight and small. 'But above all the wall represents transparency. The transparency of our mission here. After all, we sit here in the centre of London, the country's eyes upon us. Beyond that glass lies the Witch House proper, and all its inmates. From up here I can see what goes on in the dark place in which the witches reside. There are no secrets from me, and there shall be none from you, I'm sure. I know you to be a very outspoken person.'

_The Witch House? Has he been smoking something? What on earth is wrong with him?_

'Mr Marchelow,' Imogen replied, steadying herself with the pronouncing of his name, 'I welcome transparency, of course. That's one of the reasons why I was so pleased to receive this invitation. And you're quite right when you say I'm a plain-speaking person. My agenda is very clear I think. There are no secrets indeed.'

'No indeed,' he echoed in a deadpan voice. He contemplated Imogen and Sioned for a few moments in silence from across the table.

'Why don't you go to the glass and take a look?' he added. 'In the name of transparency.'

Imogen looked slightly puzzled at this strange entreaty. With his right hand, Mr Marchelow gestured to the glass wall, waiting impatiently for her to oblige him. Unable to resist giving him a sterner look, Imogen got up from her chair and walked across the room to the glass, her heels echoing loudly on the hard floor as she went.

Beyond the glass, she found herself looking down at the great atrium that she had read about. Although Mr Marchelow had called it a dark place, it was almost over-lit, saturated with a harsh light, as if a thousand fluorescent tubes had been fitted to the ceiling. Several floors high, the atrium stretched into the distance, lined with myriad tiny lights along its walls. She deduced that the lights were coming from what once were offices, effectively civil servants' offices, now transformed into cells. Down on the atrium floor, she could make out two groups: the majority were shabby, oddly dressed figures standing around talking, lounging about or following aimless or circuitous routes around the atrium; the others were less numerous, more smartly dressed figures and much more purposeful. They watched the prisoners from a distance, or seemed to usher them about, pointing their wands at them to encourage obedience. Imogen looked back from the wall. Mr Marchelow's mournful eyes were upon her.

'What's your impression?' he said sonorously, his voice picking up a little of the room's metallic echo.

'I can't really form much of an impression from up here,' she replied. 'I suppose it all looks quite peaceful.'

'You seem disappointed.'

'Disappointed?'

'You were expecting squalor and oppression, no doubt.'

Imogen came swiftly back across the room.

'I don't think I had any specific expectations,' she said, pausing near the edge of the table. 'I came here with a completely open mind.'

'You have a completely open mind on matters of witchcraft, is that it?' said Mr Marchelow. 'You are one of those who think it quite acceptable that some people have supernatural power over others?'

'I agree that wizards shouldn't have power over the rest of us, Mr Marchelow. 'But if they accept society's rules that shouldn't be the case.'

'There are some who accept the rules of our society,' said Mr Marchelow. 'You saw a few of them down there, doing the thankless task of acting as warders to those wizards who refuse to be bound by our rules and who undoubtedly wait for their fellow wizards on the outside to come and throw down the walls of this building.'

'_I've heard that Mr Marchelow was even more anti-magic than Mr Morley_,' she had said to Mr Laceby. Mr Laceby had sighed and run his hand through his fine, grey hair.

'_Which is quite possibly why he was made deputy director here_,' he had replied.

Imogen looked quizzically at Mr Marchelow. He bristled with anger from within his beard. She glanced across at Sioned. She could see her face in profile: her cheek was still flushed, her gaze fixed on Mr Marchelow.

'Is there any evidence of a plan to free the wizards?' Imogen asked.

Mr Marchelow stared at her for a moment before answering.

'Imogen, how many wizards would you say there are unaccounted for around this country?'

'No one knows exactly.'

'Precisely. There are thousands. From those who have decided to cooperate with us we've been able to gather a list of names of known wizards who have neither been regularised nor reside down there.'

He tilted his head slightly towards the glass wall, speaking the words 'down there' slowly and deliberately, with withering contempt.

'There are some infamous names on that list.' he continued. 'And what's more, we know that some of them have a history of insurgency and guerrilla warfare. And of breaking into magical buildings.'

Imogen chewed her lip and drummed her fingers on the table. They made a horribly loud noise.

'Shouldn't this information have been made available to me as integration officer?'

Mr Marchelow smiled. She preferred it when he frowned.

'It's being made available to you now.'

'And do Mr Rance and Mr Laceby know?'

'They know. The Prime Minister's Office has been informed too.'

The reference to the Prime Minister's Office didn't surprise her. When the world had learned that not only were wizards and witches real, but that they formed an entire parallel society run by a Ministry of Magic and kept hidden with the collusion of the Prime Minister, the only thing the then Prime Minister could do was to fall on his sword. The caretaker Prime Minister who replaced him of course had ambitions for the appointment to become permanent, and this involved taking the witchcraft problem, as it was known, very seriously indeed. In addition to throwing together AMA, an important and very public role had to be found for the hero of the hour, the man who had exposed the secret magical society. Which was why Imogen had the pleasure of Mr Morley gloating at her at every committee meeting she attended.

'What about the Safe Magic Campaign? Is Mr Morley being kept informed as well?'

The smile was gone. _So much the better_.

'Without the work of Stephen Morley, we would not be where we are today. This place,' he said, with a dismissive wave of his hand, 'would be hidden from sight and still in business.'

'But he isn't a member of our staff. He should only hear what gets discussed in all the committees he sits on.'

'Without Stephen Morley,' Mr Marchelow continued, still in the middle of a measured tirade, 'we would have no one to guard the wizards, no one to gather information about the rest of them. They are our eyes and ears.'

'You know, Mr Marchelow, I've never seen the contracts that must have been signed for all this prison warding and surveillance work. Did he put in a good tender? Are we paying him much?'

He was smiling again. This time the smile was worse than before.

'Tell me,' came the reply, Mr Marchelow's voice soft and restrained again, 'how have your attempts to contact rogue wizards been going?'

_How does he know about that_? She had only discussed it with Mr Laceby, who was trying to set it up. She couldn't believe that he would tell Marchelow. But maybe his attempts at making contact had been overheard.

'I wouldn't advise consorting with witches,' he added when she didn't reply. 'You may set out with good intentions, but there's a likelihood you will be corrupted.'

Imogen tried to compose an answer. The only sound in the room was the soft scratching of Sioned's pen in her notebook.

'Rather than contracting out the information gathering,' she began tersely, 'why shouldn't we save money and try to do it ourselves?'

'They have powers that you won't be able to resist,' Mr Marchelow replied. 'You've probably read up on some of the sorcery they practise. Imagine what it's like to have a curse performed on you. You will be a mere tool for them. They will turn you. They may even have started already.'

'With all due respect,' Imogen replied, 'how am I supposed to help integrate wizards into society if I can't even meet with them?'

Mr Marchelow's smile had disappeared into his beard. Imogen was glad to see it go.

'You think they can be integrated into normal society, do you?'

'I wouldn't be doing this job if I didn't.'

He laughed briefly at this.

'You taking this job has nothing to do with climbing the ladder, I suppose? Come on, Imogen, you're not being interviewed for the job now. From what I know of you you're not the sort of person who would have a weakness for witches. But maybe I misjudged you.'

She could feel her heart beating much faster.

'I'm here to serve the Agency,' she replied. 'This Agency was set up to help integrate these people into society.'

'Regularise them.'

'Register them certainly, among other things. And one of those other things is making sure that they are released from detention.'

'You're aware of what sort of mess there would be if I were to throw open the doors and let them all out. A _very nasty_ mess it would be.' There was a glimmer of a smile on his face at this prospect.

'The Agency wasn't set up to keep them there indefinitely.'

'The Agency was set up to serve the interests of the people of this country. The ordinary people of this country, who are rightly worried about having thousands of wizards on the loose.'

'There is no evidence that the people down there have done anything wrong or would do if they got out.'

Mr Marchelow seemed to rise in his seat.

'The more fuss you make about the wizards, Imogen Sontley, the more you risk being suspected of representing their interests, not those of the normal people of this country.'

'Mr Marchelow,' said Imogen, leaning slightly over the edge of the table and delivering as withering a look as she could muster, 'I was certainly not hired to represent anyone's interests, apart from those of Her Majesty's Government …'

Her sentence was interrupted by the ringing of a mobile phone. After a few moments Mr Marchelow reached irritably into his jacket pocket and took out his phone.

'Yes? Oh, it's you, Charlie. What do you mean, you can't reach him? Have you spoken to Karl? Look, I know you're supposed to keep watch on him at all times … At the end of the day, if he wants to go around without any protection, that's his business. It's good for his image, I suppose. No, I wouldn't do that if I were you. I won't be able to help you … Yes, I know he does. There's nothing that can be done about that at the moment … I'm afraid I can't go into this anymore right now. I'm in a meeting. Yes, that would be better. Come and see me this afternoon, around four. Ok. Goodbye.'

He snapped his phone shut with a peevish sigh then glanced at his watch.

'My apologies,' he said in an abruptly placatory tone. 'I'm afraid that we won't agree on anything if we carry on in this way, Imogen. I don't wish to keep you all morning. We shall go down now, if you're in agreement. I shall call my assistant, who will be accompanying us.'

Imogen nodded tersely and sat back down at the table next to Sioned. Mr Marchelow stood up briskly and took out his phone again. He paced across the room towards the glass wall, looking down into the Ministry of Magic as he spoke.

'Hello, Poppy? Are you free now to take the visitors down? Good, see you in a minute.'

He turned back from the glass wall.

'My assistant will be with us in a moment. It's necessary, for your protection, that someone with magical abilities accompany us down to the facility.'

'A tamed witch?' said Sioned suddenly, speaking almost for the first time. She sat tautly at the table, her eyes cold and wide.

Mr Marchelow looked brusquely at her for a moment. Then he seemed to smile.

'That's quite a good analogy, in fact,' he said softly.

At that moment there was a knock at the door. Almost immediately a young woman in a smart black tailored suit, with fair hair and green eyes entered the room. In her right hand she held a wand at her side. Mr Marchelow nodded coolly at her.

'Miss Sontley and Miss Meyrick, this is Miss Bailey, my assistant.'

Poppy Bailey shot Imogen and Sioned a rather bored look. Then she paused and looked again at the two of them with more interest.

'Hello,' she said in a neutral voice, her green eyes suddenly alive.

'Hello,' said Imogen and Sioned at the same time.

'Are you ready to go down?' she asked. They nodded.

'It's this way,' she said, pointing to the still open door.

She held the door open as first Mr Marchelow then Imogen and Sioned went out into the corridor.

'You probably saw the gate when you first came in,' she said to them once they were all out in the corridor.

'Yes, I remember,' said Imogen.

'You'll need to be careful,' said Poppy nonchalantly as she led them back down the corridor. 'We've taken away their wands, but they can still do magic if they want to.'

'They can't be very keen on you,' remarked Imogen as they reached the metallic entrance.

'They're not,' said Poppy as she gestured for them to step closer to the gateway. 'But they know it's not worth their while to try anything on with us. They know the consequences.'

By now the tall, red-haired wizard they had seen at the gate when they came in was standing next to Poppy. The two of them raised their wands, pointed them at the gate and spoke an incantation under their breath. Slowly the gate began to open.


	52. The penitence of Lillian Herrick - Ch 5

5\. The wizards among us

The first thing that struck Imogen was the smoothness of the dark walls that loomed up around them. The walls gleamed darkly, carved with a precision that presumably only magic could achieve. Faces turned to stare at the sound of echoing footsteps as they set out across the vast atrium. The blonde witch walked a few paces ahead of Imogen and Sioned, her wand drawn, scanning the pale faces of the inmates for any sudden movement or inkling of unrest. Some faces were quickly averted, others lingered, scrutinising Imogen and Sioned. A second warder soon joined them, taking up position at their rear. He was tall and muscular, with short, cropped hair, sharp, amused eyes and a rather bushy beard.

'They exercise in shifts,' remarked Mr Marchelow. From his intonation one would have surmised that this was a reference to some kind of diabolic rites. In any case, the wizards didn't seem to be doing much exercise. Whether walking or static, they all seemed listless and pallid, as if they had gone too long without daylight.

'They look drugged to me, Mr Marchelow,' remarked Imogen in a loudish voice.

'They have an air of defeat about them, that is all,' replied Mr Marchelow. 'Not of remorse, I hasten to add. Not one of them handed over their wand willingly. They all refuse to be regularised. They remain shameless.'

They passed not far from a man and a woman loitering by a wall. They stood close to one another, as if they were a couple. The woman looked closely at them and seemed to point in Sioned's direction. The warders' wands were immediately trained on them.

'You, come here!' said Poppy Bailey in a strident tone. The woman hesitated for a moment, then came forward. She had long, greying curly hair and a slightly puffy face. Imogen glanced over at Sioned. She was looking straight at the woman as she meekly approached.

'What's your name?' said Poppy Bailey, scowling at the woman.

'Doraldean Rayment,' the woman replied in a low voice.

'Why were you pointing at us?' Poppy Bailey continued angrily.

'No … no reason,' said Doraldean Rayment. Her eyelids fluttered rapidly as she looked from Poppy Bailey to Sioned and Imogen, then back to the witch who had addressed her.

'Nobody points for no reason,' said Poppy.

'Some witches can do magic without the aid of a wand,' said Mr Marchelow, veering suddenly towards the woman. 'Were you hoping to curse us?'

'Not at all,' replied Doraldean Rayment. 'There would be no point. The Array would …'

'The Array would detect it indeed,' interrupted Mr Marchelow. 'But you may have wanted the satisfaction of cursing us anyway. You may have thought the punishment was worth it.'

'I never even considered it,' she replied, her lip trembling slightly.

'I could call up the duty officer right now,' continued Mr Marchelow, 'and ask if the Array has recorded any magical activity in this segment in the last couple of minutes.'

'I promise I didn't do anything,' she insisted.

'Your promise is worthless,' replied Mr Marchelow in a louder voice. 'So why did you point?'

'I … I thought these two girls might be new prisoners and I … I was wondering who they were and where they came from.'

'Who they are and where they came from is no concern of yours,' said Mr Marchelow.

'We're not witches,' said Imogen, stepping closer to Doraldean. 'We're from the Agency for Magical Affairs.'

The witch shook her head.

'So you work with him,' she said in a low, resentful voice.

'We're here to see how you're being treated.' Imogen insisted, trying to strike an upbeat tone. 'Is there anything you'd like to tell me?'

She glanced at Sioned and then back at Imogen.

'No,' she replied. 'Nothing at all. You will reach your own conclusions. I wish you a pleasant day.'

Imogen and Sioned were escorted away. Doraldean Rayment watched them keenly as they went.

They entered a long, tall-ceilinged corridor lined with doors on either side. The doors that ran down both sides of the corridor bore names, surely the names of the wizards who had worked in them. Poppy Bailey stopped in front of a door. It had a peephole incorporated into it, a piece of magic done presumably when the offices had become prison cells. Inside a tall, thin man in his fifties with an unkempt beard and longish grey hair sat in silence on his bunk. He looked sadly towards the peephole for a moment then looked away.

'Come here,' said Poppy Bailey in a commanding tone.

'No,' replied the prisoner.

'I said come here,' she repeated. Taking up her wand, she made the glass partition of the peephole disappear. Another incantation, and the prisoner was forced stiffly to his feet and made to approach the peephole. He looked balefully through it at the visitors.

'Not in a good mood today, Harold?' said Poppy.

'Oh I'm always in a good mood when you come and see me, Poppy,' he replied drily.

She turned with a faint smile to the visitors.

'This is one of the most senior wizards we caught. Him and the Irish one. The Minister of Magic escaped though.'

The prisoner smiled drily.

'He wasn't the only one to escape,' he remarked. 'You should worry less about us and more about them.'

'You see?' said Mr Marchelow, interrupting. 'How do you expect to integrate these people into society?' He turned to the prisoner.

'This young lady is our integration officer,' he began, his voice dripping with sarcasm. 'She would like us to release you all. She thinks that you would behave yourselves in society. What message do you have for her? Perhaps you stand a better chance than I do of convincing her that you are not to be trusted on the streets.'

The prisoner shifted his gaze to Imogen and Sioned.

'Where are you from?' he asked politely.

'We work for the Agency for Magical Affairs.'

His expression grew sadder.

'You work for him.'

This was impossible to deny.

'We're working to try and do something for you.'

He looked hard at her, but after a few moments his expression softened.

'What's your name?'

'Imogen Sontley.'

'Well, Miss Sontley, as they told you, I held a position of some seniority here before all this … I'm no stranger to trying to send the right political message, so you'll forgive me for not getting my hopes up.'

'I understand,' Imogen replied. 'But you can't stay in here forever.'

'No,' said the prisoner. 'Something's got to happen sooner or later.'

His expression flitted from her face to Sioned's then back to hers.

'It does me good to see faces like yours. You in particular, Miss Sontley, remind me of someone who used to work with me. Someone who warned us all what was going to happen. Someone who wasn't listened to.'

'And who is that person?' Mr Marchelow cut in. 'She — and I presume it is a she — sounds like someone we ought to know about. Is she in here with you?'

'Thankfully not,' the prisoner replied.

'He means Hermione Granger, I'm sure of it,' Poppy Bailey cut in. 'She worked in the same department.'

'Did she?' said Mr Marchelow, a murderous look kindling in his eyes. 'We must have a chat about her some time, Mr Hawkwell. We would very much like to know her whereabouts.'

'I haven't the faintest idea where she is,' the prisoner replied. 'As you well know, it's impossible for any of us to communicate with anyone on the outside without you knowing about it.'

'Quite so,' replied Mr Marchelow. 'But anything you can tell us about her would be of interest. She wounded Stephen Morley on top of the Ministry of Magic the day it was revealed.'

'Mr Marchelow,' said Imogen. 'Since the Met Police is responsible for any criminal investigations into the events on the day of the rising, we will need to transfer this man to police custody for him to be questioned. I can have a formal request on your desk this afternoon if that's what you wish.'

Mr Marchelow turned to look at her, the expression that the name Hermione Granger had roused in him still very much in evidence on his face. This was his weak point. He was unwilling to let the police question any of his prisoners, or to let any of them leave its walls, even temporarily. And on top of that, the criminal investigation into acts of violence committed on the day the Ministry rose was blocked, largely at the behest of Mr Morley himself. The simple reason for this was that it would effectively mean investigating all his people, while the wizards who had fought against them had disappeared into the ether.

'No,' Mr Marchelow replied in a low voice. 'That won't be necessary. The unfortunate truth is that he probably can't tell us much of use anyway.'

'I see,' said Imogen in as serious a voice as she could manage. 'In that case, with your permission, I'd like to return to the question of the conditions in this … facility.'

'Proceed, Miss Sontley,' Mr Marchelow replied coolly.

'Mr … I'm sorry, what is your name?'

'Harold Hawkwell.'

'Mr Hawkwell, I'm not going to pretend that wizards are going to have an easy ride in society. I'm sure you can imagine the sort of obstacles there are to harmony. You're going to have to make some compromises. But since my job title is 'integration officer' I have to try and help you integrate.'

Harold Hawkwell smiled again.

'You almost convince me, Miss Sontley.'

He glanced beyond her at Mr Marchelow and Poppy Bailey, but said no more.

'So how would you describe the conditions here?' she asked.

'Oh, perfectly adequate,' he replied. 'They feed us at regular times, allow us to wash. They don't harass us. There are punishments for those who disobey their rules though.'

'Punishments?'

Harold Hawkwell glanced at her then at Poppy Bailey.

'Nothing too draconian … What one would expect really.'

'And what would one expect?' Imogen asked quietly.

'Loss of privileges … Stricter regime … that sort of thing. No … violence. Not as far as I know anyway.'

He swallowed perceptibly then looked away.

'Is there anything else you'd like to say?' asked Imogen.

Harold Hawkwell paused, and pushed a lank lock of grey eyes out of his face.

'Once you get used to the fact that your own office has been turned into your cell, you can get by all right.'

A look of apathy seemed to return to his features.

'Excuse me,' he continued in a more official sounding tone. 'I'm feeling rather tired now. Could I have a rest?'

He took a last glance at Imogen and Sioned.

'Thank you for coming to see me,' he said, then walked slowly back to his bunk and sat down, watching silently as Imogen turned away from the cell door. Sioned stayed staring at it for a few more seconds before coming away herself.

They were quickly marched back down the corridor towards the main atrium. Imogen had the feeling that there would be no more meetings with prisoners.

'I hope you're now convinced that the prisoners are being treated correctly here and have not been drugged,' said Mr Marchelow as they reached the atrium again. 'If they seem subdued,' he added, 'it's because they have a compunction to do magic. So when they go for a long time without being able to use it, they suffer a degree of degeneration in their faculties.'

'By that logic, if you keep them here long enough they'll die or become seriously ill,' said Imogen sharply.

'Oh I doubt that.'

'Sioned,' said Imogen in a quiet but business-like tone, 'could you make a note that we need to look more closely at what kind of medical treatment is available here?'

Sioned nodded as she wrote, her hand shaking a little.

'They have all the medicines they need,' Mr Marchelow replied. 'That is, medicines to treat normal human illness and injury. But tell me, Imogen, how is human medicine meant to cure a witch's dependence on witchcraft?'

'Surely magic can be used for healing as well,' Sioned said suddenly in a quiet voice.

Mr Marchelow turned and stared at Sioned.

'I suppose that must be true,' he replied drily. 'Shall we just go ahead and allow the general use of magic in this facility then?'

'Well, you use magic to keep the prisoners in line,' replied Sioned in the same quiet voice.

Mr Marchelow fell silent. He looked at her with wide eyes then turned to Imogen.

'Miss Meyrick is a trainee, I believe?' he said in a low voice.

'That's right,' Imogen replied.

'Well, given that she's a trainee, I take it she still has rather a lot to learn. I only hope that she learns everything she needs to before her time with us comes to an end.'

They had reached the centre of the atrium. Mr Marchelow glanced about then looked casually at his watch.

'I'm afraid that I have no more time to continue this meeting,' he said abruptly. 'I trust you have seen enough. I look forward to reading your report on conditions here.'

'There's one more thing actually, said Imogen. 'I would like to see this Array device that supposedly registers all magic.'

'It doesn't _supposedly_ register magic, I can assure you,' replied Mr Marchelow, apparently offended at Imogen's choice of words.

'I would still like to see where it's kept,' Imogen continued.

Mr Marchelow proffered an expression that was half scowl, half smile.

'It is not kept in one place,' he replied after a rather long pause,

'Well, where is it being kept at the moment?' asked Imogen.

Mr Marchelow licked his lips and slipped his hand into his pocket.

'We cannot allow that information to leak out,' he replied. 'Every wizard in this country would like to get his hands on it. And you never know when spies are about.'

Mr Laceby had told her he had heard that the device was small, making it easy to move from one place to another. _He was right about that too_.

'_Perhaps Mr Marchelow shares it with his friend Mr Morley,'_ she had commented to him, almost flippantly. Mr Laceby seemed to take her remark seriously.

'_Quite possibly. They were both undoubtedly involved in its manufacture.'_

'_But who does it belong to_?' She had asked. '_Us or the Safe Magic Campaign?_'

'_Good question_.'

'Mr Marchelow, I signed a confidentiality agreement when I joined the Agency …,' Imogen began.

'You certainly did,' said Mr Marchelow. 'But your security clearance does not go that high. You would require a special security clearance that not even Mr Rance has. And quite apart from that, by trying to meet with wizards who are at large you are planning to put yourself in danger. If you had seen the Array, or knew where it was, they would have the information out of you in two seconds. Of that you can be sure.'

'Wouldn't the Array tell you if wizards used some spell to read my mind?'

Mr Marchelow smiled a cold smile.

'It would. But who's to say that wizards would use magic to get the information out of you?'

Suddenly he glanced at his watch.

'I'm afraid I have to go now,' he said flatly. 'I'll leave you in Poppy's capable hands. She'll see that no harm comes to you in here. Ramsden,' he added, turning to the bearded warder. 'Would you come with me please.' The wizard called Ramsden nodded and followed Mr Marchelow as he walked quickly away across the atrium.

Imogen could hear Sioned sigh under her breath as they passed back through the gates. Poppy Bailey walked silently with them through the foyer and, to Imogen's surprise, followed them out into the empty, interstitial area under the walls of the Ministry. Although the sky was heavy and overcast, daylight was overpowering after the relative darkness of the Ministry.

'Well,' said Imogen, beginning to turn away. 'Thank you for your time this morning'.

'Just a moment,' said Poppy. Imogen turned back and looked at her. With her pink dimpled cheeks and laughing brown eyes framed by straw blonde hair, the witch's face was what you would call sweet. Poppy Bailey was smiling, but it was not a particularly friendly smile. Imogen was reminded of a girl she went to school with, who used to smile a similar kind of icy smile whenever she was exerting her superiority over her classmates, and even over her friends.

'I don't think you realise just how lucky you are,' said Poppy.

'I'm sorry?' said Imogen.

Poppy turned her gaze on Sioned.

'Do you think I didn't recognise you?' she said. The voice was calm and cool. 'You were a couple of years below me at Hogwarts. You were in Hufflepuff.'

Imogen could feel her jaw drop. She turned to stare at Sioned.

'But judging from her reaction you managed to fool her at least.'

Sioned returned her gaze coldly.

'How come you didn't say anything back in there?'

Poppy sniggered under her breath.

'Oh, there are enough witches and wizards locked up in there. We don't really need any more,' she replied, the same smile still on her face. 'Though I must say, I admire your bare-faced cheek.'

'I work for Imogen,' said Sioned. 'She wanted a volunteer to come with her to visit this place. Nobody else wanted to go, I agreed to.'

'That's true,' said Imogen, slightly breathlessly.

'Is that all?' said Poppy. 'You weren't doing a little bit of surveillance on the side? You must have plenty of free witches and wizards among your friends. Goodness knows what you're mixed up in.'

'I'm not mixed up in anything,' Sioned replied. 'I have to earn some money, just like anyone else.'

'In the Agency for Magical Affairs? Funny choice, don't you think? I suppose you put the fact that you're a witch on your CV, did you? Graduate of Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry? I'm sure you impressed them with all your specialist knowledge on the subject. That must be what convinced them to give you the job.'

While this speech was going on, Imogen finally felt as though she had caught up with events again.

'I'm sorry,' she said, interrupting. 'But it makes perfect sense for the Agency to hire people with magical ability.'

Poppy Bailey snorted in response.

'Maybe to hire regularised witches, but not unregularised ones like Sioned here. I suspect Mr Marchelow would take a dim view of who you take on as staff.'

'Look,' said Sioned, 'I don't mind being regularised. It's my fault that I haven't mentioned this at work. I just want to help sort out this mess.'

Poppy Bailey looked coolly at her.

'Who says it's a mess? You and your friends, I suppose.'

'I didn't come here to reconnoitre the place for anyone,' Sioned protested. 'And even if I did, there's not a single bit of useful information I could pass on to anyone.'

'Maybe not,' said Poppy. 'But I suggest you get yourself regularised. I'll have to check up on you. Imagine the sort of trouble I could get into with Mr Marchelow if he found out that I had covered for you, right under his nose at that.'

'Yes, thank you,' said Sioned.

Poppy Bailey looked at them quietly, a look of satisfaction on her face.

'Was there something else?' Imogen asked.

'Yes, I'm just waiting for you to say thank you as well. I'm not sure how long you'd last in your job if Mr Marchelow found out what happened today.'

'I appreciate your discretion,' Imogen replied. 'But Mr Marchelow doesn't have the power to fire me on his own.'

'Maybe not,' said Poppy with another cold smile. 'But that's not exactly what I meant.'

Although she had just been threatened, Imogen realised she had to hold her tongue.

'Again, I appreciate the risk you're taking,' she said. 'It goes to show that the different sides in all this aren't irreconcilable.'

'No, I don't suppose they are,' said Poppy.

'Then why are you doing this?' said Imogen, lowering her voice.

The witch paused for a moment to consider her reply.

'Because I always like to pick the winning side.'

The smile on her face was impossible to interpret. It wasn't malicious, or triumphant. It was just matter-of-fact.

It would have been easy to reply '_who says you have_?'. But Imogen reflected that it would have been a mistake.

'See you around,' Poppy added. She turned to Sioned and touched her on the arm. 'Oh, and make sure you sort yourself out. Bye.'

Then she turned and walked briskly back towards the entrance to the Ministry of Magic.

* * *

There was little conversation between Imogen and Sioned as they made their way back to the Agency. Imogen knew better than to broach the subject in broad daylight and Sioned certainly made no attempt to. Imogen noticed her glancing around her nervously more than once as they headed for Farringdon Road to catch a bus back over to the south side of the Thames. '_We'll talk about this later, ok?_', was all that Imogen had said, once they were well beyond the precincts of Sorcery Square. Sioned had nodded in silence and they had walked on.

Back at the office there was scarcely any time to talk. Imogen had to report back to Mr Rance and Mr Laceby on her visit to Sorcery Square and Sioned quickly buried herself in the files she had taken over. She thought about discussing it over a sandwich in a nearby café, but the fear of being overheard or spied upon all of a sudden seemed too great, even down there near the Agency, on their turf. Or especially down there. She glanced around the office, scanning the different floors of the building for a secluded spot. But she seemed to see Mr Marchelow's hirelings everywhere. She even caught herself wondering if there were any safe wizards in the building. _If Sioned's a witch, who knows who else might be_. She went through all the names on the staff list, but she found it hard to believe that any of them were really up to the job. But then again she had never suspected Sioned either.

Finally she hit upon a small square of gravel out the back of the building, hemmed in by the rear wall of the neighbouring office building. She had never seen anyone use it for anything: she hadn't even seen anyone go there for a smoke. At half past two she went quietly to Sioned's corner of the office. Sioned's head was up from the desk before Imogen had got halfway across the floor. She nodded her head swiftly without Imogen having to say anything, got up and joined her. Megan Fairley, the other girl in the office, didn't even look up from her work. Imogen found it inconceivable that Megan could be a witch, but the less she saw the better.

Fortunately it wasn't raining when they got outside. Since the spot Imogen had selected for their chat was hemmed in by high walls on all sides, it seemed fairly well protected from the wind. The gravel crunched unevenly under their shoes as Imogen led Sioned to the pointless and random little square of ground.

'Am I going to get the sack?' had been Sioned's opening line. Imogen surmised that she must have a rather severe look on her face, which she endeavoured to correct to something more sympathetic.

'Not as far as I know,' Imogen replied. 'And if anyone asked me, I'd say that you shouldn't be.' _Not that Mr Rance would ask me_. 'In any case,' she continued. 'No one mentioned it when I spoke to Mr Rance and Mr Laceby. And Mr Marchelow or Poppy Bailey would have had plenty of time to contact them if there was any question of that.'

Sioned smiled weakly.

'Thanks, Imogen. I'm really sorry for hiding this. But you can understand why?'

'I understand, Sioned. I mean, I realise that you must have been sort of economical with the truth to get this job, and I don't normally like being tricked, but in the circumstances I do understand.'

Sioned seemed to breathe a little easier. She looked up slightly, her gaze presumably getting no further than the concrete wall behind Imogen.

'I suppose your CV was all made up,' said Imogen. Somehow she couldn't quite let her off that easily.

'I'm afraid so,' Sioned replied. 'Including my university degree, previous work experience, which part of London I live in … But I do actually have some work experience.' She glanced around her again and lowered her voice. 'I once did a traineeship in the Ministry of Magic.'

'Is that right?' said Imogen. 'So you've been in there before?'

Sioned nodded.

'That woman you spoke to in there, Doraldean Rayment, she recognised me.'

'What about Harold Hawkwell?'

'I don't think so. I never met him. But like he said, he was someone very important in the Ministry.'

'So where did you work?'

'In the de-hexing department.'

'The de-hexing department,' Imogen repeated in a deadpan voice. As she lowered her hand one of her fingernails snagged against the fabric of her skirt. The nail felt rough, and she felt the urge to chew it.

'So I suppose I'd better get myself regularised,' said Sioned contritely.

'I suppose so,' Imogen replied.

'But if I do, isn't Mr Marchelow going to find out?'

Imogen had a vision of Mr Marchelow poring over lists of regularised witches and wizards. It seemed like the sort of thing he would do.

'Possibly,' said Imogen. 'But I'm not sure that Poppy Bailey will want to risk annoying him any more than you or I do. So he may not even find out. And if he does we'll tell him that we knew all along and hired you on the understanding that you would regularise yourself.'

'Would he buy that?'

'He might do.'

That wasn't good enough.

'We'll think of something,' she added quickly. 'I don't think it has to be done straight away.'

By the look on Sioned's face she didn't seem very reassured.

'Just out of curiosity,' Imogen continued, 'how did you manage to get yourself hired here? Are we really that lax in HR on checking people's qualifications?'

'Umm … I wouldn't know,' Sioned replied. 'But I'm sure Monique in HR does a very good job.'

'Possibly,' said Imogen.

'You're not going to ask her about this?'

'Oh no.'

But she still felt the need to do a bit of checking.

'In any case,' said Sioned, 'I don't think Monique had the final decision.'

'Probably not,' said Imogen. 'Mr Rance, Mr Laceby or Mr Marchelow would have had to sign off on it. And since it can hardly have been Mr Marchelow, it must have been Mr Rance or Mr Laceby.'

'I wouldn't know,' said Sioned cagily.

'Well, it would be interesting to know anyway,' said Imogen.

'That won't be necessary,' said a voice behind her.

The girls wheeled around in the tight space.

Mr Laceby was standing a few feet away from them. _How much did he overhear?_ Then again, Mr Laceby had an uncanny knack for knowing about everything. He was tall, thin and slightly stooped so that he seemed to hang above them in the air, his steely side-parted grey hair drooping limply over one side of his face. He was very pale, transparent even, almost spectrally so.

'Forgive this intrusion,' said Mr Laceby, nodding solemnly to both of them. 'I thought it best that we set the record straight about Sioned's situation. I signed off on her traineeship.'

'Then you know …?' said Imogen.

'Yes.'

'And you know that Sioned was recognised by Mr Marchelow's assistant.'

'By Poppy Bailey, yes.'

'So what are we to do about it?' asked Imogen.

'It will be taken care of,' said Mr Laceby, his tone sombre and determined.

'How?'

Imogen's mind was racing. Mr Laceby was known to excel in the area of all that seemed extraneous and marginal and at fixing the unfixable, through gentle manipulation of the little frayed strands at the edge of the administrative apparatus. It was said that he had no need of keys, as being so insubstantial he was able to pass through keyholes altogether. _Could he be a wizard too? A senior civil servant with over 30 years' experience?_

'If Sioned agrees, she will be regularised, but the name that goes on the Safe Magic Campaign's list will not be hers.'

'That can be arranged?'

'Yes.'

'By magic?'

'Not exactly.'

_Not exactly? What does that mean?_

The faintest glimmer of a smile appeared on Mr Laceby's lips.

'Imogen,' he said, almost gently, 'if Sioned's records were tampered with using magic, don't you think that the Array would register it?'

Sioned nodded almost imperceptibly.

'I suppose it would.'

'Quite right,' Mr Laceby replied. 'So rest assured that nothing will be done that can be detected by the Array.'

This reply struck Imogen as very deliberately worded. She glanced around to make sure that no one else was within earshot.

'Mr Laceby, can I ask why you chose to hire a witch?'

'Of course. Since the witch-hunters are represented in this Agency, it seemed only fair that the other side should be too.'

'The other side?'

Imogen turned to look at Sioned.

'There is another side,' she said, a note of defiance in her voice.

'So you were reconnoitring the building today?'

'Not really,' said Sioned. 'We already know much more than what we saw today.'

'We?'

'The coven I'm in.'

'Coven?'

Sioned looked a little disappointed at her reaction.

'Don't worry, we don't cackle around cauldrons in graveyards or anything.'

Imogen sighed in spite of herself and looked away into space. The blank walls that surrounded her were of no help. She swayed slightly on the spot. Looking down she saw that she had inadvertently driven the heel on one of her shoes down into the gravel under foot.

'I'm sure you don't,' she replied as she pulled her heel out of the gravel. At least some of the gravel had made it inside her shoe. 'But I really need to know what's going on round here. I mean everything.'

'You will,' said Mr Laceby. Despite his fragile, transparent appearance, at that moment there seemed to be a bitterly hard core to him.


	53. The penitence of Lillian Herrick - Ch 6

6\. Witch's bones

'Look, Nat, it's your ex.'

She looked quickly in the direction Eve was pointing, her heart pounding in an instant. It was only when she couldn't see Ron standing across from them in the main aisle of the shopping centre that she realised that she was thinking of the wrong person altogether.

'Let's go in here,' she said, subtly grabbing Eve by the arm and guiding her through the open door of the nearest shop.

'What do you want to go in here for?' Eve grumbled in mock protest.

'Oh, I thought I might get something for going out,' Natalie replied, already ducking behind an aisle and pulling an off-the-shoulder black top from the nearest clothes rack.

'Oh yeah, I remember you saying,' said Eve, deadpan as she mooched over, an expression somewhere between a scowl and a smirk on her face. 'You're definitely not trying to avoid him.'

_At least Eve's starting to cheer up_. She looked in the mirror with the top draped over her. Her heart rate had gone back down: the shopping was already having a tranquilising effect on her.

'What do you think?' she asked, making eye contact with Eve's reflection in the mirror.

'Are you thinking of wearing it to Anathema?' said Eve.

'Didn't you say it's called Hex now?'

'Whatever.'

'I might.'

Eve looked over her shoulder.

'Do you want me to go and see if he's gone?'

Natalie looked a little sheepish.

'Would you mind?'

Eve managed a faint smile and went slowly out of the shop.

'He's gone,' she said when she returned.

'Thanks,' said Natalie, giving her a quick squeeze on the arm. She put the top back on the rack.

'Changed your mind?' asked Eve.

'Yeah,' said Natalie. 'Can't really afford it either.'

The man Eve had called 'her ex' was probably her biggest mistake since arriving in Unham. Natalie Grey had not been long in town at the time and only really wanted two things: to fit in and to feel numb. It had been horribly easy: get dressed up and go to a club on a Friday night, have too much to drink, end up going home with some random man. What had really beggared belief, though, was the fact that no matter how dreadful she had felt afterwards, she had agreed to meet with him and his friends the following weekend and had ended up repeating the experience. There had not been a third time. She had remembered thinking, a few days later when the horror had begun to subside, that she had missed an opportunity in the aftermath of that night to seek out Lillian Herrick. She felt so awful she was sure she would have wiped the floor with her.

They wandered out of the shopping centre and onto the High Street. Eve was out of sorts that day, she could tell.

'Do you want to get a coffee or something?' Natalie asked.

'Ok,' Eve replied, apparently far away.

The cafe was relatively empty for a Saturday afternoon. It was at the more select end of what Unham had to offer, the sort of place where you would be served coffee by a barista rather than some bloke behind the counter. There were cheaper, more down-at-heel options nearby, but the cafe's sleek, brightly coloured interior seemed as if it might offer some sort of antidote to the bleak mood Eve was in, as the mood was catching.

There was no getting the conversation started. Natalie looked down into her half-drunk coffee cup. Ripples started to form on the surface of the liquid, concentric circles moving outwards. For a moment even the spokes were visible. A seven-pointed circle. Instinctively she looked around her, to check if Lillian was walking in through the door, or if the walls of the cafe were reconfiguring themselves into some nightmarish psychic decor. But nothing happened. _Lillian, is this the end of your silence? Are you whispering to me again_? _I'm not going to use the Circle on her, even if I haven't forgotten how to use it._ She looked back at the surface of the coffee. The circle had gone; perhaps she had imagined it.

'Something's bothering you,' she said suddenly, looking up from her coffee cup.

Eve shook her head slightly, as if she was trying to throw off an ugly thought.

'It's that obvious, is it?'

Natalie nodded. Eve picked up her spoon then put it down quickly.

'Well, isn't it normal that this life should get you down sometimes?'

_Definitely, Eve, definitely_.

'Sure.'

'I mean, we're going nowhere, aren't we?'

_In more ways than one_.

'Pretty much.'

'This town can do that to you.'

'Well, I'm sort of fond of it, but you're probably right.'

'Don't get me wrong,' said Eve. 'I sort of like its dreariness. I don't think I could bear to live somewhere that's too up itself. In fact, next time some arsehole comes into the petrol station and starts shouting abuse, or some shoplifters drop by, I'll be sure to be thankful that I live in a place that's so real.'

'At least you haven't got a shift for another two days. That's almost far enough away to pretend you don't have a shift at all.'

Eve smiled silently, but without much conviction. _There's something more though, I'm sure. I'm not just paranoid_.

'But what's _really_ bothering you?'

Eve's head seemed to tilt a little as she looked at her, and her brow furrowed slightly.

'I didn't know you were a mind reader.'

_Go on, why don't you?_ She seemed to hear a voice in her head, the vaguest of whispers.

'Oh of course I am, isn't it obvious?'

That at least drew a proper smile from her. _One more try_.

'Don't you want to talk about it?'

Eve looked at her in silence as she seemed to try and decide.

'I err … no, not at the moment,' she replied at last.

* * *

At half eight the streets of the town centre were already thronging with revellers, roaming up and down the High Street or bunched together outside bars and fast food places, some of them already staggering as they walked or shouting too loudly. Natalie and Eve gave them as wide a berth as possible, turning quickly onto a side street. It was cold and rather damp out, hardly surprising for an evening in early March, but they were rather immune to it, having each drunk a large vodka and coke before leaving the house.

They were heading for the Vaults. The pub was appropriately named, as it occupied the basement of a parade of mock-Tudor fronted shops on a rather run-down street that branched off the High Street. It was a dark, old fashioned, but relatively quiet pub. It also had the advantage of being located only a couple of minutes' walk from the club where 'Anathema' was held. As a bonus, the route from one venue to another avoided most of the carnage on the High Street.

When she had finished getting ready and looked at herself in the mirror, she had let out a single, slightly hysterical laugh. It was hardly the first time that Natalie Grey had got dressed up for a night out, but somehow the sight of it all still shocked her. She already felt slightly lightheaded as she switched off her bedroom light and went into the kitchen, where Eve was leaning over the work surface, pouring the first drink of the evening out of their home supply of alcohol.

They had tentatively knocked at Mike-os's front door on their way out, but the lights were off and no one answered.

'He's probably already in town, drinking,' Eve had remarked, rather dismissively.

In the bus into town, a couple of local lads had checked them out as they passed them on their way to their seats, but mercifully didn't have the nerve to actually try and chat them up. Streetlights, shop signs and lights in the windows of houses loomed out at them as if in slow motion as the half-empty bus veered past.

The side street was nearly empty, the Vaults public house being the only bar on it. There was no one they knew down in the bar, although some of the faces of the people drinking there seemed vaguely familiar. The bar was neither too full nor too empty, and Natalie felt a sense of relief at being off the street. Eve quickly occupied a large corner booth while Natalie went off to order drinks. They soon set about their second vodka and coke of the night while they waited for the others to arrive.

Ten minutes later Zoe and Carly walked in. They always came as a pair, having been best friends since primary school, and having grown up around the corner from one another out on Unham's middle-class fringe. Eve's home town was too small to merit a sixth form, so while her friends could walk home, she had a forty-five minute bus ride home every evening. _So this town is actually a step up for me_, she had told Natalie not long after she moved in.

Zoe was petite, almost as petite as Eve, with dyed fire-red hair and a cute, dimpled face. She spoke rapidly and at great length, but in a detached, slightly singsong voice. Her conversation was a strange mixture of perfectly sensible and completely air-headed observations, making it hard to gauge her actual level of intelligence. Carly was tall and thin, by far the tallest of the group, with a slightly boyish figure. She had shortish blonde hair that hung rather limply over her ears, and her mouth was large and always smiling, which was appropriate because she was very approving of everything and everyone. This had led to the mistaken impression that Zoe was the more intelligent of the two.

A torrent of excited conversation swept the table as Zoe and Carly sat down. Zoe's boyfriend was not in attendance.

After another ten minutes or so, Mike-os strolled into the bar. He apologised for his lateness: he had been drinking in the Windmill, another town centre pub, with someone called Doyle, whom they had never heard him mention before. To make up for being detained by this Doyle he stood the girls a round of drinks.

Mike-os's full name was Michael Ostler, but it had long since been shortened to Mike-os, a contraction that dated back, so he claimed, to the first year of senior school. There was general agreement that Mike-os was good looking. He had piercing, slightly startled grey eyes and dirty blonde hair with a tendency towards spikiness. He was slim and not particularly tall, but there was a kind of wiry athleticism about him, despite the fact that he never seemed to do any physical effort. Most of his time seemed to be devoted to sleeping, listening to loud music and drinking. He had a mildly mischievous air about him, although it had been worn down and dried out by years of drinking and smoking. Eve had once described him as being like a kind of debauched pixie.

'What were you doing in the Windmill? Isn't it an old man's pub?' asked Zoe.

'It's Doyle's local. Won't drink anywhere else.'

'Didn't someone get glassed in there last week?' said Eve.

'Yeah, but Doyle told me it was someone making a right prick of themselves.'

'When do we get to meet this Doyle? He sounds like a real charmer,' Eve remarked.

'I'll see what I can arrange,' replied Mike-os, seemingly trying to wipe something out of his eye.

'Where did you dig him up from anyway?' asked Zoe. 'You never mentioned him before.'

'Yeah, I only met him recently.'

'As a result of drinking in the Windmill …' added Carly.

'It's not that bad in there.'

'It's the sort of pub,' Eve put in, 'where everyone looks round at you when you walk in.'

'Ah, they get used to you after a while.'

'You're a local there as well, now, are you?'

'I wouldn't go that far.'

'Anyway, ' said Natalie, whose curiosity had been piqued, 'you were telling us about this Doyle person. Is he our age or older?'

'Older.'

'Much older?'

Mike-os seemed to muse on this question.

'Hard to tell how old he is exactly. To look at him I'd say he's 50 at most …'

'Fifty!' At this point interest in Mike-os's new friend waned drastically.

'So he's some dodgy old bloke basically,' said Eve.

'He's not dodgy,' said Mike-os. 'He commands respect.'

'What does that mean?'

'I mean, when he talks, you sort of feel like you should be listening.'

'Is that right?' said Natalie, her interest suddenly picking up again.

'And what was he telling you that was so interesting?' asked Zoe. Her tone, by contrast, was one of sultry mock-sarcasm.

'Well, for one thing he told me there are witch-hunters in town.'

Natalie stared at him.

'What are you talking about?' she said.

'You wish, Mike-os,' Eve cut in dismissively. 'Witch-hunters wouldn't bother with a place like this.'

'Ah, you might think that, Mike-os replied, his eyes glinting. 'But Doyle's seen them.'

'How would he know what they look like?' asked Carly. 'Unless he saw them bundling wizards into the back of a van.'

'That's just what he did see,' Mike-os replied. 'Or something not far off it.'

'Really? Where?' Natalie exclaimed.

'On the Lowerfields Estate. See, a rumour had been doing the rounds that there was a family of witches living on the estate, and some of the locals decided to have it out with their kids as they walked home. Don't know whether the people were witches or not, but they gave as good as they got. The police had to come and break it up.'

'Well that's a real surprise,' said Eve sarcastically. 'People fighting up on the estate.'

'What about the witch-hunters?' asked Natalie.

'They turned up the next day on the estate, asking questions.'

'You said they bundled someone into a van,' Zoe remarked.

'Doyle did say he saw someone leaving with them.'

'What, the would-be wizards or the neighbours who wanted to beat them up?'

'He asked one of the neighbours and they told him it was witch-hunters who'd been round.'

'That confirms it,' remarked Eve with sarcasm. 'Definitely witch-hunters.'

'There's more,' Mike-os continued. 'My brother-in-law told me that something's been going on out on the Gasworks Road Industrial Estate. You know the diodes plant?'

'No,' said Zoe.

'I've heard of it,' said Eve. 'The temping agency I used to work for sends people there.'

'Anyway, just across the road from it is a vacant warehouse. Or at least it's supposed to be vacant. Apparently lights have been seen inside it, and people have been seen hanging around in the car park at night.'

'So what?' said Carly. 'Probably just some kids who broke in.'

'I said the same thing,' Mike-os replied. 'But the people seen hanging round the place were adults, well-dressed as well. They couldn't have been interested in renting the place, because what estate agent's going to show you round at night?'

'What a network of informers you have,' remarked Eve. 'Must come from all that time sitting around in the Windmill.'

'You can pick up some interesting things round there,' said Mike-os, suddenly reaching into his inside pocket. 'Like this.'

He flashed the inside of his hand before them. In his palm was a small transparent bag containing a dirty, yellowish powder.

'What's that?' asked Zoe, her eyes wide with interest.

'It's called 'Witch's bones,' said Mike-os quietly. At once on the alert, Natalie scrutinised his facial expression. He seemed rather pleased with himself.

'More witches?' said Natalie with a sigh.

'What's it supposed to do?' asked Eve.

'Something a bit like magic.'

'What, take that and you can do spells?' asked Carly.

'To do spells you need to know the incantation,' Natalie cut in. 'Or that's how I understand it anyway.'

'More likely it gives you hallucinations that delude you into thinking you can do magic,' remarked Eve.

'Yes, that sounds more like it,' agreed Natalie.

'You'll only find out if you try it,' said Mike-os.

'Yes, that sounds like a great idea, take some dodgy substance that you picked up in the Windmill,' said Eve.

'You needn't worry,' replied Mike-os, stowing the package in his pocket. 'I've already tried the merchandise. It's quite chilled as an experience.'

'But did you do any magic?' asked Eve slyly.

'As a matter of fact,' he replied with a wink, 'I managed to move a fork off the table and into the cutlery drawer.'

The girls protested loudly in unison.

'You sure you were actually hallucinating? asked Eve. 'Or did your Mum come round to tidy your flat?'

'Funny' he replied. 'Your loss if you don't want to try it. Like I said, it gives you a really nice buzz. It does have one strange effect though.'

'What's that?' asked Natalie drily.

'It makes the sky turn red.'

A perfect stillness seized her as soon as she heard the words. _This isn't a coincidence._ She could feel herself looking very carefully at Mike-os, only in such a way that he wouldn't see that she was looking. _Are you involved in this, Mike-os? Or are you just a courier?_ Maybe he had managed to move a piece of cutlery across a room after all. And who was this Doyle person? Was it someone she knew in disguise?

After that it was hard for her to think of anything else. Soon they finished their drinks in the Vaults and took the short walk to the bar that housed the _Anathema_ rock and alternative night, pushing their way past a group of drinkers clogging up the pavement in front of the Vaults. One girl reeled backwards on her heels and started to shout at them, but they were already halfway down the street, and the rest of the group seemed too sluggish or disinterested to pursue them. They made it into the club with no more than a drunken call of 'fucking goths' from down the street. All the time she was watching Mike-os, thinking about the bag of 'witch's bones' in his pocket.

Inside the club it was still early. The dance floor was largely empty, with little groups clustered around its edge, shouting over the music and drinking beer from plastic cups. There were still some empty tables in the shadows of the club, so they quickly occupied one and Natalie went off to buy the next round of drinks. By the time she returned, they had been joined, much to everyone's surprise, by Zoe's boyfriend Neil and his mate Ed. Zoe and Neil and Ed and Carly were crammed along one side of the table, and Mike-os and Eve on the other, each side looking at the other, with not much in the way of conversation to be had between them. Soon Neil was dragging Zoe away to dance, to her apparent satisfaction. After some brief whispering, Neil's mate Ed departed with Carly in the same direction. Natalie glanced around the club, just in time to see Zoe kissing her boyfriend discreetly on the dance floor. Mike-os had seen it too, but the serene expression on his face seemed to suggest that he was taking a philosophical view of things. Or that he was already on something.

She cleared her mind, listening for the silence between the distorted guitars drilling her ears, unable to think of anything but the Circle. The challenge had been set.

'I could do with some fresh air,' said Mike-os distractedly. _To look at him, you'd hardly think he needs or even regularly experiences much fresh air._ She saw Eve's gaze drift to the area of Mike-os's pocket. _She wants to try it_. The pieces were in place. She couldn't let them wander unaccompanied beneath the red sky, especially not Eve. She knew it and whoever had set the trap knew it too. Perhaps they had come to take her into the Circle, using witch's bones to open the door.

'Yeah, let's get out of the town centre,' agreed Eve.

'Do you have somewhere in mind?' asked Natalie.

'What about Pukebank?' said Eve.

'Ah yes, fresh air and the great outdoors,' said Mike-os.

Eve turned to Natalie.

'You up for it Nat?'

She knew what was going to follow.

* * *

'Pukebank' was really Puckbank, a swathe of parkland that coiled itself around the other side of the town centre before meandering off into the suburbs and out into the countryside along the course of the Puckbrook, from which it took its name. The Puckbrook was the only watercourse of any note that flowed through Unham, although much of it had long since been culverted. It was by no means a river, rather a shallow stream that cut its way back and forth through forlorn meadows taken over by straggling woodland on higher ground and degenerating into marshes down by its banks. Only the risk of flooding had saved the area from redevelopment. In among the tall grasses and scrubland stood half-digested industrial buildings that once drew their water from the stream and leached pollution back into it. The name 'Pukebank' was most likely a tribute to the teenage drinkers that often visited its shores.

Quite appropriately, Pukebank was reached via Water Street, a narrow lane lined with old brick-fronted workshops interspersed with squat, peeling terraced cottages and tired post-war low rises. All signs of habitation soon petered out into patches of fenced off waste ground. The tarmac ran out by the Council sign marked 'Nature Reserve', replaced by a gravel path that dug its way down the river valley.

Although the nature reserve was frequently visited by gangs of young people out for a wander in the dark and other, lonelier souls, that night there was no sign of anyone. They pressed on, moving vaguely in the direction of the river itself as it flowed silently and out of sight beyond the tall grasses and bushes.

At last Mike-os led them off the path. They passed through a tangled and disorderly copse into a bare expanse of grass that was screened on the one side by the trees and secluded on the other by the half-collapsed and ivy-covered wall of a long derelict warehouse. Mike-os crouched in the long grass and took the little package he had been carrying out of his pocket. The girls stood over him, watching as he mixed the yellowish powder with tobacco and inserted it into a small metallic pipe that he had extracted from another pocket. The wind whipped up a little and buffeted the little flame that shot from his lighter.

'Did I mention that it's supposed to be made from ground-up witch's skull?' Mike-os said, looking up at them with a grim smile, his face pale yellow in the flame's light.

'Very funny,' said Eve. Natalie said nothing. She shivered in the cold night air.

Mike-os took the first puff of the pipe, closing his eyes for a moment as he exhaled. Then he proffered the pipe to the girls, looking up at them with a sly grin.

They both hesitated. Then Eve reached out her hand and took the pipe. She looked out at the darkened sky and inhaled. The stars were increasingly visible beyond the orange glare of lights thrown up by the town. She turned to Natalie and held out the pipe in her hand, a slightly glazed expression in her eyes. Natalie glanced down at Mike-os, who was sitting in the grass below them.

'A mellow high, you said,' she said, doubt in her voice.

'It is,' he concurred peacefully.

She took the pipe in her hand. _Another terrible idea of mine. _Suddenly she thought of Harry and Ron. For an instant she tried to picture the three of them, looking out over the heath and hills around Hogwarts crouched in the grass, stoned under the stars, wondering what it would have been like. _As if we had time for anything like that. _She inhaled deeply, and a strangely sweet taste like burnt cinnamon gushed into her mouth and down her throat. She exhaled through her nose, a few wisps of grey smoke drifting from her lips, which were slightly parted and already dry. As she exhaled her muscles flexed and relaxed. She looked out at the sky. She saw the same dark mass indented with pricks of light, only it seemed nearer, as if she was reaching out towards it, growing taller and thinner. Distant blocks of flats on the other shore looked distended, grasping painfully up into the night sky. Now even the stars were no longer tiny illuminated points, but gashes of light rent in the darkness. And the light that shone from them shone not white, but blood red. She closed her eyes and for a moment she caught a glimpse of a black sea and a shrouded, distant island. The light went out on the scene almost instantly, and behind her eyelids there was only darkness. She thought she could discern a voice, whispering very faintly, as if from a great distance. The whispering comforted her, even though she couldn't make out the words. _This is a good place_, she said to herself. But the whispering faded to nothing, and her eyes shot open. Above them hung a vast, lurid red sky. Emblazoned across it was a vast black circle, like a wheel with seven spokes.

When she became aware of her surroundings again she found that she was sprawled on the ground in tall, matted grass, the entire sky stretched out before her. She swayed to her feet, the boggy, overgrown landscape of Pukebank still around her. Eve and Mike-os were not far off, walking randomly among the overgrowth and collapsed buildings. She began to walk towards them through the grass, her heartbeat taut and ragged. The feeling of being in a good place was gone. The stars that swung over her head were tainted by the red filter that had been stretched across the night sky. This was a place of dust and despair, like an addict's stale and sweat-streaked mattress.

She called out to them and they turned languidly to look at her, their faces pale, their gazes euphoric yet distant. Eve waved halfheartedly at her. The feeling of despair got worse. '_They're coming_', someone seemed to whisper to her. '_Do what you came here to do. Quickly, before it's too late_.'

The next moment Eve and Mike-os were gone from her sight. She had sent them far away, to a place that was unknown to her. Then the silent sky was split by what sounded like the beating of great wings, and a shadow was cast over her, pinning her to the ground. When the shadow was drawn aside and the light of the stars returned, two faces were looking down at her. One was a mask, a crude wolf's mask, a pair of sharp, grey eyes the only part of its bearer's true face that was visible. The second face was not masked, but all the more dreadful. It was the face of a man, long and grey but ageless. The eyes were wild yet controlled, and utterly pitiless. Both men were tall, but the grey man was still taller than the masked man, his great head and broad shoulders almost filling the sky.

'This is the one,' said the wolf mask.

The grey, ageless face examined her with a look of cold, vague curiosity. Then he leant down and stretched out a long, claw-like finger and gently prodded her just above the line of her top. The touch of the finger was warm, but rough and desiccated.

'What a feeble creature,' he said at last. The voice was deep and urbane, but dry as his skin. 'Like a half-starved rabbit,' he added, and the wolf mask let out a strangled laugh.

'Why are you wandering here, little one?' he asked gently. She could only shiver in response. 'You're lost.'

She wanted to reply, but her tongue seemed incapable of working, so she nodded slightly. This seemed to amuse him momentarily, but the smile quickly faded, replaced by a look that was utterly devoid of pity.

'Don't linger here, little girl,' said the ageless man. 'You will not survive. You're too small a morsel for me, but I know of other, lesser hunters who may wish to pursue you.'

As he spoke the words, she heard the sound of a blade being withdrawn from its sheath. The wolf mask was holding a long, cruel knife in his hands, which gleamed dully in the dark.

'I could put you out of your misery right now,' he said, holding the blade over her abdomen. Strangely she felt a temptation to laugh. The wolf mask seemed somehow pathetic in comparison to the grey man, obviously his master. She moved her tongue again and found that it worked.

'I'd rather you left me and my misery alone,' she replied.

The wolf mask glanced at the grey man, who made no response.

'But you even haven't the strength to move, Hermione,' he continued. The name startled her. _How does he know?_ 'It's no fun if you can't at least run.'

'No, she replied, feigning calmness. 'I'll just lie here and look at the stars, if you don't mind.'

The wolf mask said nothing, and she imagined that if she could see its mouth, the mouth would be frowning. In any case, it was clear to her that he had no power to act of his own volition. He couldn't act without his master's say.

The wolf mask raised the blade of his knife until it was close to her face.

'If I do see you running, I'll be after you.'

She said nothing, and tried to look away, into the night sky.

'Enough,' said the grey man impatiently, and her tongue went numb again. 'You waste your time and mine. Talking with would-be prey serves no purpose, and if you can content yourself with this, then your appetite is not worthy of the word.'

The next instant the grey man's shadow dispersed, the wolf mask following after him. She lay still in the grass, not daring to move, and not sure if she even could move. _These are who Mr Zurabian came to warn me about._ She remembered the key he had given her, currently locked up in a jewellery box in her room. _Perhaps I should go try going there._ But the red sky now seemed hideous to her. She had no desire to wander under it. At the same time she felt a kind of relief, relief that the wolf mask had known her and called her by her true name. Here _her_ mask didn't exist. She wasn't sure if she could bear to put it back on. But she had to. And she had to recover Eve and Mike-os, recover them and get out of that place.

The redness of the sky faded to ordinary black and movement began to return to her limbs. As first she felt too disorientated to even recognise the figures standing over her. She reached for her wand, the wand she no longer had. Her fingers closed in around empty air, and instead she clenched her fists. Fire seemed to seethe beneath her skin, waiting for her to speak the enchantment and release it. Now she recognised the figures: it was Eve and Mike-os. Standing over her, worried about her, oblivious to how much danger they had been in. She remembered the night that had come before the descent into that other place: the drinks in the pub, the streets of Unham, Pukebank under the stars, and the witch's bones. _Witch's bones_: the very name seemed to mock her, and fear and suspicion seized hold of her again. She was up on her feet in an instant and shouting right into Mike-os's startled face before she realised what she was doing.

'Who are you?!' she shouted at him, struggling wildly as Eve tried to pull her away. 'Who are you working for?' Her voice seemed to reverberate around the empty field and the dark sky.

'I … I'm unemployed, remember?' said Mike-os, stepping away from her in surprise.

'What a pathetic answer!' she cried, in a voice much closer to Hermione than Natalie. She stood still and looked at him, all the time trying to calm herself down. Her heart was still pounding erratically in her chest, but the dizzying rage was starting to abate.

'I never thought it would give you a bad trip,' he said. 'I've never heard of it having such an effect on someone. Seriously.' He seemed genuine.

'Did you see them?' she asked, the face of the grey man before her eyes once again, and with it the feeling of dread that seemed to accompany him.

'Who?' shouted Eve, as if she thought she couldn't hear her.

Mike-os stared at her, genuinely perplexed.

'You're lucky,' she said. 'We must never wander there again. Do you understand me? There are hunters down there. Never wander under the red sky. We were all lucky. Somebody warned me in time.'

'Nat,' said Eve, suddenly taking her by the arm, 'Natalie.'

She turned to look at her, for an instant surprised by the name.

'I think you're still hallucinating,' Eve continued, 'but you're going to be alright.'

With her free hand she reached out and touched Eve's arm.

'I'm not,' she murmured, allowing her friend to turn her around and laying her head on her shoulder. 'I'm really not.'

* * *

'You know you wear too much make-up.'

Eve was standing just across the hall from her, each of them in front of their bedroom door. Very little had been said on the way home. The feeling of paranoia, of blind fear even, had faded and gradually given way to mere tiredness. There was even a sense of relief, amazement almost, that she had escaped the encounter under the red sky. Apparently it was only her being too puny a morsel that had saved her. She glanced at her reflection in the hall mirror.

'Maybe you're right. But I prefer it that way.'

'It's a shame you hide your face,' said Eve. 'You're really very pretty without it.' She spoke softly, but her voice seemed to reverberate around the hallway.

'I don't often get called very pretty,' she replied, trying to smile but failing. It wasn't the sort of thing Ron had ever said to her, and she didn't care to remember the other names he had called her. _Sometimes I wonder what I'd have done if I'd have been prettier_, she remembered saying once to Harry. _Would I have tried so hard to be clever?_ It had been that day when he came to help her pack her belongings and see her off at Kings Cross. She didn't know what had possessed her to say it. She just remembered gesturing at the excessively large and slightly unsteady pile of books on her bed and giving him a sardonic kind of look. _But you are pretty_, he had replied, without a moment's hesitation, looking straight at her. _Beautiful in fact_.

'Good night, Eve,' she said. 'Please promise me you won't touch that stuff again.'

'I don't think I even want to,' Eve replied. 'It was scary what it did to you.'

'It was,' she replied. She turned to head towards her room but Eve stopped her.

'Wait. I want to show you something.'

She nodded and followed Eve into her bedroom. Clothes and shoes were strewn on the bed and the floor and over the back of a chair. Above the bed was a collage of photos, some faded, others more recent, and above them all hung a skull and crossbones flag. The room must have looked quite similar to the bedroom she had when she was a teenager. Natalie sat on the bed while Eve examined the wall of photos, then pulled down one of them.

'Here,' she said, handing her the photograph. It showed Eve a few years younger, sixteen maybe, in school uniform. Next to her stood a boy with dark hair, good looking and a slightly embarrassed, while Eve pouted at the camera. There was a strong resemblance in their eyes and mouth.

'Is that your brother?' said Natalie. She knew Eve had a brother, even though she rarely mentioned him.

'Yes,' said Eve. 'He's in prison. He got nine years for aggravated burglary.'

'That's what's been bothering you.'

Eve nodded.

'Was he innocent?' asked Natalie.

Eve shook her head.

'There were two of them. He was put up to it, but he was guilty all right.'

'What happened?'

'Him and this other bloke broke into a warehouse at night. They took turns to beat up the security guard then turned the place over. Completely fucking stupid and horrible.'

She looked up. She was smiling but her gaze was opaque.

'Still, I wouldn't want to give you the wrong impression about him.'

Natalie reached out her hand and grasped Eve's.

'What is he like? ' She said softly.

Eve took hold of the other corner of the photograph and looked hard at it.

'He's a _good person_.'

'What's his name?' said Natalie.

Eve looked up.

'Sean.'

'Does he have any chance of … getting out soon?'

'No, not really. But I don't really know what soon would mean in this case. My mother wants me to go home, so she won't be on her own.'

Natalie looked around the room; a little wave of fear swept through her at the idea that Eve might leave it.

'Are you going to go?' she said, almost breathlessly.

'I can't go back there, not permanently. If you think it's shit round here, you should see where I come from.'

Natalie smiled, partly out of relief. Even if the relief was somewhat hollow.

'But it doesn't really matter what happens to me,' Eve began again, her eyes clogged with tears.

'Have you been to see him?'

'Yes, a couple of times, but I don't know if I can bear to go again.'

'How does he seem there?'

'Like he's coping, I suppose. He thinks he has to put on a show for our benefit. But there's no way he can be ok. That much I can see. That's why I'm scared to go and see him again. I'm scared I won't recognise him anymore.'

Natalie put her arm round Eve's shoulder and pulled her tight against her.

'What does he say?'

Eve sniffed.

'That he deserves it.'

Natalie looked at the bed for a moment.

'He's lucid about it,' she said. Her voice came out colder than she had intended.

'Yes, he's lucid about it,' replied Eve. 'But how long can you keep going on like that?'

'You're right, I don't know.'

She lay her head on Natalie's shoulder. Eventually she raised her head and wiped her red, swollen eyes, having left a trail of damp tears on her flatmate's shoulder. Natalie looked into her eyes and smiled. She began to open her mouth but couldn't quite bring herself to speak.

Eve slipped out of Natalie's grasp and turned to face her.

'One day I suppose you're going to tell me what it is that makes _you_ so sad.'

The sentence reverberated in her head, numbing her ears and tongue. Whole minutes of silence seemed to elapse. Finally she stretched out her hand, grasping Eve's, and nodded numbly.

'I will,' she said.


	54. The penitence of Lillian Herrick - Ch 7

7\. Itinerants

The next morning was cold and damp. Banks of grey cloud clogged the sky, and drizzle was either already falling or about to start. She brushed a lock of hair away from her cheek then finished the application of eye shadow. She looked into the mirror to examine the results of the experiment: what Hermione would wear, that was what she had been aiming for. The dye was fading and her hair looked thicker and more undulating than it had done in a long time. She found the reflection in the mirror jarring, much more so than if she had been looking at herself without make-up. She turned and went straight out of the bathroom.

Eve was sitting at the table that was pushed against the wall nearest the door in the living room, picking at a half-eaten bowl of cereal. She sat down quietly at the table opposite her and said 'Hi'. _Now I even sound like Hermione_.

When Eve looked up from her cereal bowl she nearly dropped her spoon. Quickly composing herself, she casually took a mouthful of cereal, chewing and swallowing it before addressing her flatmate.

'You took my advice,' she remarked evenly.

'It feels strange,' Natalie replied.

'Like you're not yourself, or something,' said Eve. Natalie laughed silently.

'Ok,' she said, taking a deep breath. 'My problem is that I've ruined the lives of three people.'

'Right,' said Eve, putting down her spoon and looking at her intently.

'Brief history,' continued Natalie, still trying to smother a Hermione-esque intonation. 'When I was at school, I had two friends: one who I had a weird, complicated crush on, and one who I just felt really close to. Anyway, I ended up with the one I had a crush on, and my other friend ended up with the sister of my … boyfriend. With me so far?'

Eve nodded and took another mouthful of cereal, not taking her gaze off her for a moment.

'Well, the thing is I could never really let him go, my other friend. I went on with trying to lead a normal life, I even thought I was, but I could never stop caring about him more than… well more than anything in fact. There was always this closeness between us, and in the end it sort of got in the way of everything. I … well, I pushed away my err … boyfriend and sort of got in the way of my friend and his girlfriend.'

'The sister,' said Eve, and Natalie nodded.

'What do you mean: 'got in the way'?'

'I suppose I mean by always trying to be there for him. To the exclusion of everyone else.'

'Including his girlfriend,' Eve remarked. 'Or especially her maybe?'

'Err … probably. And then, just to make it worse I devised a complicated lie so that everyone would think we weren't really friends anymore. But that ended up making things worse. Eventually it all came out and now my ex-boyfriend and his sister basically hate me and my friend is lying in a hospital bed in a coma.'

'What happened, did your boyfriend and his sister try to murder him?'

'No, not exactly, I mean, no, not at all. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time.'

'How long has he been in a coma?'

'Four months pretty much.'

'That's bad.'

'I know.'

'Four months ago is about when that Ministry of Magic surfaced in the middle of London.'

_She's quick_. Avoiding the truth was going to involve actual lying rather than just leaving out the key details.

'He was one of the people who ended up getting shot in the chaos that day. But it's not so relevant why he's in a coma, just that he is in one.'

There was a long pause. Eve took another mouthful of cereal and Natalie looked down at the table.

'So, you're saying you're running away from everything,' said Eve.

Natalie looked up from the table.

'Yes, effectively.'

'Shouldn't you be by your friend's bedside or something?'

_I've been there so many times, Eve. But how do I explain that?_

'Well… the thing is... I just know he's alive.'

'How?'

She glanced down at her left wrist for a moment.

'I just know,' she replied, looking up.

Eve pushed her cereal bowl away and looked hard at her flatmate.

'What will you do when he wakes up?' she asked quietly.

A flicker of a smile passed over Natalie's lips. It was nice that Eve would think it possible.

'You know I hadn't got that far.' The words came out in a little burst of what felt like relief. _But really, what would I do?_

'Just uh … go to him, I think,' she said at last.

'Nothing else?' asked Eve, a hint of amusement in her question.

Natalie returned her friend's glance. _She wants to know if Hermione is in love with Harry_.

'I've never thought of it as being more than that,' she replied. 'It's just that we've been through so much together, I can't imagine my life without him. I have to be with him without actually _being with him_, if you get what I mean.'

'I think so,' said Eve. She leaned back on her chair with a sardonic look in her eyes. 'You're a strange one. Far too strange just to mindlessly work on the checkout.'

'You underestimate the depth of people who work on checkouts.'

She looked away for a moment. The dull, congested sky that filled the window seemed to tell her that everything was alright, that she could stay hidden for as long as she liked. But when she looked back she already knew it wasn't true.

'With time,' she began, 'I'll be more like everyone else.'

'You're quite good at pretending that there's nothing going on upstairs,' remarked Eve.

_I could say the same for you_.

'But you'll never be as lacking in ambition as, say, someone like me. And if you ever did, it would be a great shame.'

* * *

The flat was empty when she got back from work. She went straight to her bedroom, kicked off her shoes and stretched herself out on the bed. Pale late afternoon sunlight was streaming through the window, but she was too lethargic to close the curtains. She pulled the duvet across herself and closed her eyes, half-determined to stay awake but dimly acknowledging that sleep was a certainty. The tension began to seep out of her limbs as the duvet's warmth enveloped her. _How much longer can I keep this going?_ But at that moment, whether or not the point where it would all end was nearer or further away didn't matter all that much.

Darkness had fallen when her eyes flashed open. She sat up in bed, trying to grasp for the faint memory of what she had been dreaming, but the memory slipped away. Through the wall she could hear Eve moving plates and crockery in the other room. She lay back down on the bed, contemplating the ceiling.

The quiet was suddenly disturbed by a rattling noise outside. She was on her feet in an instant, her eyes trained on the window. The rattling continued, and as she approached she could make out a dim form beating against the outside of the windowpane. She threw the window open and found herself looking at a large, wizened grey brown owl peering at her from the window ledge. Her eyes wide in surprise, she leaned out into the cool dark of the evening, but could see nothing beyond the assortment of lights in the backs of the next row of houses. The owl sat patiently on the window ledge, now perfectly serene, as if it had been waiting for her. Glancing over her shoulder to see if Eve had heard the noise, she reached down to the owl's leg, to see if it was bearing a message. A tiny scroll of paper was attached to the bird's leg. Her heart thumping, she quickly detached the paper, closed the window and sat back down on her bed to read it. The owl seemed to linger on the window ledge for a few moments, looking in at her with huge, probing eyes. Then it promptly raised its wings, turned and flew off into the night sky, gone as quickly as it had come.

The message was particularly short, and unsigned. It read simply:

_They will find you_.

She couldn't rest until she had gone through all her belongings and prepared an overnight bag, all as noiselessly as possible. Natalie Grey's possessions consisted mainly in clothes, cosmetics and a pile of assorted fashion magazines dating back over the last few months, so what passed for essentials were easy to assemble. And she had no qualms about leaving most of her clothes behind. _I will need to change my image again._ Once the overnight bag was packed, she placed it in the bottom of her wardrobe and closed the door. As she sat on the bed facing the wall, she caught herself reaching into her pocket for her wand, shaking her head forlornly at the thought of such a gesture. Instead she listened for any meaningful sound around her. Apart from the muffled sound of the television through the wall from next door, there was nothing to be heard. When she checked the time on her mobile phone it was after eleven. Eve would most likely be going to bed soon.

She wondered whether she should be gone that night. She took out the little scroll again, wondering who on earth had sent it to her. The gesture of sending an owl struck her as an almost flamboyant piece of risk-taking; she didn't think that anyone she counted as a friend would consider doing something like that. It also seemed unlikely that Lillian Herrick had sent her the message. Charming people was the easiest thing in the world to her, but an owl would never take a message from a muggle, as Hermione Granger knew only too well. One thing seemed clear to her: the warning in the message was sent by someone who meant her well, or at least meant for her to escape capture. The message was clear: in time, she would be found out. But she knew that already. Disappearing in the night without a word to Eve and simply not turning up at work would attract attention and probably end up with the police involved. And evidence of sudden flight was likely to interest witch-hunters. Now the thought occurred to her that the message was meant not to help her, but to flush her out into the open. The overnight bag stayed packed in the wardrobe; she wouldn't be getting it out that night.

Her shift the next day finished mid-afternoon. There was pale sunshine in the sky when she emerged into daylight, but the High Street had a rather desolate, empty air about it, making her unwilling to linger there. She glanced up at the top of the church tower visible above the roofs. On reflection a walk in the churchyard would do her good.

She passed through the churchyard's elegant wrought iron gates and began a slow circuit of the church, its stone walls looming up over her. Sometimes she would stop to read some of the names on the gravestones, but today she didn't feel like it. As she came around the far side of the church, she could see that the bench she usually sat on was occupied: a small group of four or five people of various ages was gathered around the bench and speaking in low voices, some sitting down, the others standing on the path or on the grass. A couple of them seemed to be drinking from cans of lager, but they didn't look like vagrants: they looked rather scruffy, but at the same time their clothes and bearing had a sort of faded grandeur about them.

She started to walk past them, realising that she had probably looked at them for a bit too long. She didn't really want to attract their attention, but she felt their glances on her as she passed them on the path. Their voices had even fallen silent. One of them in particular, a hale, round faced man in his fifties or sixties with a white beard and long but receding white-grey hair, seemed to look very pointedly at her. Something about the way he held himself as he sat on the bench, and the slightly deferential gestures of the others made her think that he was the leader of their group.

'Nice day today, don't you think?' said the man, a smile on his lips and his dark eyes flashing. There was an urbane dignity in his voice, combined with a trace of a west country accent.

'Better than yesterday,' she replied, almost looking back over her shoulder as she began to put distance between herself and them.

'Peaceful town this,' he continued.

She kept walking.

'Still, it's funny to see a person such as yourself living among the dackles.'

She stopped and looked back. He was still sitting on the bench, one leg crossed over the other, smiling at her. A thought flashed through her mind. _Surely it couldn't be_?

'You think I'm restless, do you?' she replied.

'Listen to her,' said one of the others, a younger man with a pale face and straggly blonde hair. 'She even charms divine.'

The man with the white beard jumped to his feet, rather lithely for a man of his build, and took a few steps towards her with a light, jaunty gait.

'I know you,' said the man. She looked at him more closely. It wasn't Caius. It would have made no sense for him to disguise himself as somebody else anyway.

'But I don't know you,' she replied warily. 'At least I don't think I do.' She glanced around herself to check if there was anyone else watching them. Only now the thought occurred to her that these might be safe wizards. _They will find you_, the message sent by owl had said.

'They _will_ find you,' the man said. Her throat went suddenly dry. 'But they won't come today. And we're not them.'

'And you came here to tell me that?'

'Perhaps my last message was a little too succinct.'

'You sent the owl?'

The man nodded.

'Who are you?'

He smiled.

'Hegarty is my name.'

'I don't recognise it.'

'There's no particular reason why you would.'

'So why are you warning me? Did somebody send you?'

'No one,' came the reply. 'No one sends us anywhere. We wander where we like.'

'So you're itinerants,' she replied, catching his hint.

Hegarty gave a little bow by way of a reply. She glanced around at the other faces. She had never seen an itinerant wizard before. They had always been a highly elusive group. Ironically many regular wizards had been forced into a similar sort of existence as the itinerants, wandering the country, in search of safe houses. Even Ron and his family were doing it. Caius had told her, that time she had met up with him between trains.

'But how do you know me?' she continued.

'Even we know who Hermione Granger is.'

The sound of her name caused a little wave of excitement mingled with alarm to ripple through her.

'But how did you know you would find me here?'

The question had been nagging in her mind. How could they know without doing magic? And how could they do magic without detection?

He stepped closer.

'There isn't one kind of magic,' he said, lowering his voice. 'You can be restless and white-eyed at the same time. You know that as well as anyone.' A kind of weightlessness seemed to come over her. She tried to conceal her excitement in a stiff little nod. _Pointless trying to hide how I feel_.

'So that's how you found me,' she replied, her voice now scarcely more than a whisper. 'You know Lillian then, I presume.'

'I know her work.'

'And was it you who supplied the witch's bones to my friend or was that Lillian?'

'I did.'

'So you're this Doyle person.'

'Doyle Hegarty, that's right.'

'But why did you do it?'

His expression took on a keener, more serious look.

'To bring you back our way. To make you realise that the time for you to stay hidden is coming to an end.'

'Last night was very nearly the end of me,' she replied, shuddering at the memory. 'Was that part of your plan?'

'I would never seek to deliver you to the Grey Man,' Hegarty replied, his face suddenly taking on an unhealthy hue.

'Is that what you call him?'

'He is a thousand years old. Who now knows his name but him? But no one calls him anything. No one dares to.'

Hegarty struggled to regain his composure. But even he couldn't help glancing about him, his eyes flitting over the trees and gravestones that surrounded them.

'We must speak no more of him,' he added in the same low voice. 'You were lucky he thought you beneath his notice. My warning pertains to the witch hunters. Flee if you wish, but ready yourself for them. For even if you flee, they will still find you eventually.'

'Lillian will lead them to me,' she murmured.

'She isn't your enemy,' he replied.

'No? Then who is?'

'Someone who keeps hidden, even from me. Someone who knows where you are. Someone who walks with the Grey Man.'

Now it was her turn to look around her, as if the churchyard gates were about to be thrown open. But the churchyard remained as green and peaceful as when she entered it. Her gaze came to rest on a gravestone a few metres away. Hegarty glanced to see what it was she was looking at.

'You feel happy among the graves,' he murmured, a trace of concern in his voice.

'They remind me of a friend,' she replied.

He nodded and looked at her. A dark expression flashed across his face.

'I'd have thought you would shun such places, given the circumstances.'

Without thinking she glanced down at her wrist. The bracelet was still in perpetual motion.

'My memories of time spent in cemeteries are not all bad.'

His expression was still dark.

'He hasn't yet joined the dead.'

'And nor will he,' she replied angrily. _I won't let that happen_.

Hegarty seemed to smile.

'He's lucky to have you watching over him.'

She wasn't sure if the remark was intended ironically.

'Luck has nothing to do with it.'

'You're right about that.'

He scratched his beard thoughtfully.

'I'd ask you if you wanted to come with us, but we have rules on that sort of thing. Even now.'

Whatever her problems were, becoming an itinerant witch didn't seem like a solution. She had read accounts that to enter the 'guild' of itinerants, a wizard had to give a 13-year pledge not to leave, sealed with a magical vow.

'That's ok. I have to deal with this myself. You've helped me already by warning me.'

'What will you do then?'

'I'll have to leave. Sooner rather than later. My bag's already packed. I just have to decide where to go next.'

_I want to go and see him_. _In the flesh. That's the first place I should go_.

Hegarty smiled at her, but it was a smile she couldn't interpret. Had he read her thoughts? He had already shown it that it was easy for him to do so.

'I wish you all the best, Hermione Granger. We all wish you the best.'

'Thanks.'

Hegarty returned to the bench and muttered something under his breath to the nearest of his comrades. In unison, the group walked away from the bench and filed past her, heading for the churchyard gates. She stood in silence, watching them go. Hegarty glanced at her as he passed, the same impenetrable smile on his face.

'I'll not lose sight of you,' he said. 'For what it's worth.'

* * *

Paranoia was at its peak the next morning as she walked to work. The sight of a car slowing as it pulled over to the side of the street was enough to make her quicken her pace, and she glanced down every side street and alleyway, expecting a witch-hunter to step out of the shadows. But she had read enough news reports to know that backstreet kidnapping was not their style.

The monotony of her till and the familiarity of her surroundings lulled her into listlessness, helping the day to pass more comfortably than she had expected. In the evening she spent as much time in her room as she thought she could get away with without making Eve suspicious or hurting her feelings. She lay on her bed, looking up at intervals from the fashion magazine she was browsing to check the window for any sign of another owl. But none came. She wondered if she should have left with the itinerants. But there was something about their way of life that struck her as rather grim and unappealing.

The next day was easier, and the day after that about the same. The prospect of leaving Unham made her look out on its dreary streets with a kind of pre-emptive nostalgia. Suddenly the place was starting to feel like some sort of home. As she lay on her bed that evening, she began to wonder whether she shouldn't unpack the overnight bag after all. But re-reading the message brought by the owl convinced her that this wasn't a good idea. It also reminded her that she still didn't have a plan.

A little while later Eve knocked softly on her bedroom door and slipped inside. They talked absently about nothing much for a few minutes before lapsing into silence. At no point did Eve ask her if anything was the matter, but she caught her glimpsing over at her from time to time with a slightly worried look in her eyes. _I haven't told you my real name_. It was better, she reflected, not to leave her real name behind in Unham. _But one day I'll tell it to you_.

'I'm thinking of going away for a few days,' she said at last, interrupting the silence.

'Is that right?' replied Eve, her eyebrows raised in curiosity.

'Yes … After that talk we had the other day, I decided that I should go and see him after all.'

The expression in Eve's eyes seemed to suggest that this was an acceptable explanation for her behaviour over the last few days.

'Where is he?'

'Greater London,' she replied, in a voice that on reflection sounded a bit too much like Hermione's.

'Text me when you get there,' said Eve. 'So I know you're … well, you know.'

She nodded in reply. Her bedroom, the little flat and the terraces of redbrick houses were endearing themselves to her more and more. She picked at the bedspread for a moment. It would be nice just to get under it, quietly lie down and wish all the wizards and witchfinders away.

'You never told me his name,' said Eve.

'Oh yes, you're right' she said firmly, after a moment's pause. 'His name's Harry.'


	55. The penitence of Lillian Herrick - Ch 8

8\. The policy

Imogen Sontley woke abruptly, a fistful of duvet clenched in her hand. She had managed to twist her way to the very edge of the bed, one of her feet dangling over the side. She extricated herself from her bedclothes and sat up straight. A gentle light pervaded her bedroom, filtering through the thin curtain. No light came from the hall, no noise from her flatmate's bedroom.

Although she was sure she was awake, the dream still seemed to be continuing in her head. It had been a particularly vivid one, and she didn't really want to let go of it. She had been walking through a town at dusk in heavy rain, her feet sloshing through puddles as she went from street to street, looking for the houses of people she was supposed from some unknown reason to locate. She carried with her a mental list of their names, but she had no idea which houses were theirs. The names seemed exquisite, beautifully crafted and particularly memorable, but she was in constant fear of forgetting them, that the list would grow ever shorter. As she recited the names to herself over and over, one or more always seemed to be missing. The twilight was deepening all the time, but the streetlights never switched on. The town centre was thronged with people, apparently undeterred by the murky darkness and the rain. She stopped in front of the glass window of a cafe. A pang of anxiety seized her as she looked through the glass and scanned the faces inside, sure that one of the people on her list was inside. She found herself staring at two girls in conversation at a table not far from the window, while in her ear she could hear indistinct voices whispering, the voices of the girls, or the voices of others. As she watched, one of the girls looked at Imogen through heavily made-up eyes, dyed black hair falling across her face. Even as the dream had faded a name remained: _Natalie Grey_.

She slid out of bed and crossed to the window. She opened the curtain and looked down from the flat she would never be able to afford on her own into the square below: a neatly tended expanse of grass, surrounded by London plane trees, and surrounding the curtain of trees, a wrought iron fence painted black and gleaming in the early morning sunlight. Countless windows looked down onto the garden from the town houses arranged around it, their facades exuding a proud, comfortable elegance.

She continued to turn the name over in her mind. The name that had seemed so loaded with meaning in the dream meant nothing in her waking life. She went to her bedside table and wrote down the name on a piece of paper lying there. Then she slid the piece of paper into a small compartment in her bag, which was hanging from the chair by her desk. Suddenly she realised that she was feeling cold, so she threw on her dressing gown and sat down at the end of the bed. An image from the dream suddenly resurfaced: an alleyway running between two rows of terraced houses. She remembered walking down the alley, looking up at the backs of the houses, as if she was searching for a particular house or window. It was dusk, and lights were going on and off in the windows, but the face of the person she was looking for couldn't be seen.

* * *

'Travelcard,' said the voice behind her.

Imogen reached out to press the button on the ticket vending machine, ignoring the voice behind her. The voice said 'travelcard' again, clearly directed at her. The voice was not the usual London accent. She wheeled around, pulling her bag tightly against her. A young man in a hooded sweatshirt stood just behind her on the concourse. He seemed to smile at her, twirling the travelcard in his hand as he waited for her reply.

'No thank you,' Imogen replied curtly.

'You can have it for nothing,' he said, suddenly holding out the card.

'No it's alright,' she repeated. She was just beginning to turn away when she happened to glance at the ticket. Written in bold letters over the ticket were the words '_Natalie Grey_.' In an instant the youth flipped the ticket over. The reverse read '_Eastbound platform_.' Imogen looked at him again. He nodded, smiled and turned away. As she watched him go, Imogen saw him take out a cigarette, light it, and set fire to the card. Then he turned the corner and was gone.

She quickly bought a ticket from the vending machine, passed through the barrier and went down the wide, wrought-iron staircase onto the platform. Her heart started to pound as she looked up and down the platform and over to the other side of the tracks. Another man in a hoodie was sitting on a bench halfway down the platform. When Imogen looked his way he beckoned her over with a nod. She calmly crossed the platform and sat down next to him. He seemed a few years younger than her. He was rather scruffy and his complexion and hair were dark, just visible under his hood.

'You've been asking about Natalie Grey,' he said in a low voice. She tried to place his accent: it was more neutral than that of his comrade. It could have been Northern or Welsh, she thought.

'I have,' she replied quickly.

It was true. She had told Sioned about her dream the day before, just in case Natalie Grey was a name that meant something in the wizarding community. Sioned hadn't heard of anyone called by that name, but thought it significant that the name had been 'placed', as she called it, in her dream. _There are certainly people who can do that_, she had said, in a brief conversation in the little space out the back of the AMA building that they were still for the moment using for stealth communication.

'So do you know her?' Imogen asked the man in the hoodie.

He paused for a moment, as if he was deliberating what answer to give.

'Only superficially,' he replied. There was something like a smirk on his lips. 'And I should tell you straight away that I don't know where she is.'

This didn't seem like a very promising start.

'What's the point of this meeting then?' asked Imogen, making a little sigh of impatience.

'To see if we can do business or not.'

'And what would we do business over?'

'We might work together, as I think we might be on the same side.'

'What side is that?' asked Imogen. She was determined to feign ignorance, partly out of annoyance at his elliptic responses. He glanced around him and then back at her, his expression more serious.

'The side that's against Messrs Morley and Marchelow and their safe wizards.'

'I see,' said Imogen. She tried to keep her voice as calm as possible, but her heart had started pounding again. 'And is Natalie Grey connected with this?'

'First tell me where you heard that name,' said the hooded youth.

'Perhaps you could tell me where you heard mine?' Imogen retorted. 'And anyway, I thought that information would have been passed on to you.'

'Nobody sent me a report about you, if that's what you're wondering,' he replied, rather tetchily. 'Answer my question first. Please.'

Imogen sighed.

'Ok, I dreamt it, it's as simple as that.'

'You dreamt it?' he said, his eyes widening in surprise.

'That's right.'

'Well, that is interesting.'

'Is it?'

'Someone wants you to know our business all right.'

She found her gaze focusing on the tiled pattern on the tube station wall. She blinked quickly and self-consciously.

'You mean someone is meddling with my dreams?'

'That's one way of putting it.'

'A witch or wizard, I suppose?'

'Could be.'

'Could you be more precise?'

He half-smiled, but the smile soon fizzled out.

'I have an idea, but I could be completely wrong.'

'I'd like to hear it anyway …'

'I can't go into it at the moment.'

'But when …'

Suddenly a tube train came clattering into the station, causing them both to jump. They waited in silence for the train to open its doors and disgorge its passengers before resuming.

'Now tell me why you're against the witch-hunters,' said Imogen.

'Why do you think?' he replied in a low voice.

'You're an uncaptured wizard,' she replied, as discreetly as she could.

'If I am, I need to know that I can trust you not to try and capture me,' he said. 'Your job description probably says something like _identify and process all persons possessing magical ability_.'

Imogen stared at him.

'Mr Morley and I have very different ideas about what is meant by 'processing wizards'.'

Her remark seemed to amuse him. She realised that she had probably sounded a bit pompous.

'I don't think I want to know what Mr Morley intends by processing wizards,' he remarked. 'In any case, someone has vouched for you, which will do for now. It would be very sensible for you not to betray the trust that person has put in you.'

'I suppose you mean Sioned,' she replied. 'Don't worry, I won't do anything to put her in danger or betray her trust.'

'She's already in danger,' he replied. 'But let's not talk about it. We've named enough names already.'

'Well, if it wasn't for one particular name, we wouldn't even be here speaking to one another.'

He scrutinised her for a moment, that look of slight amusement back on his face. _We must make for a strange looking pair_. _The civil servant and the hoodie_. _It probably looks like I'm buying drugs off him_.

'You remind me of her,' he said, almost wistfully.

'Of Natalie Grey?' she said, surprised at his sudden change of tone.

'So to speak,' he replied. That's another good reason why I think we can trust you.'

She pushed some hair out of her eyes.

'Ok, thanks, I think. But since we're talking about names, can I just mention one more thing? I don't even know what yours is.'

'Another time,' he replied, his tone suddenly quite gentle.

'But how can I contact you if I don't know your name?'

'You know how.'

'Through …' she began, before stopping herself.

'No more names.'

The next train came rattling into the station, this time without startling them.

'This is my train,' he announced. With a polite nod, he stood up and walked through the opening doors of the tube train. Imogen sat quietly on the platform, waiting for the next train.

* * *

Imogen sighed as she tipped a sachet of sugar into her coffee cup. After crossing the Thames and back she felt like her chest was filled with traffic fumes rather than normal air. She twirled the plastic stirrer in the coffee and plugged her charger into the plug in front of her, before taking her rapidly dying phone out of her bag and plugging it in. She had just about enough room to cross her legs under the cramped counter. After knocking back a first mouthful of coffee she glanced at her watch. _Five twenty-five. I should probably go back to the office_. The imminent demise of her phone had sent her on a rapid mission over to Blackfriars to retrieve her charger from her flatmate, Lorna. _I don't really have time to come out to meet you halfway_, Lorna had told her, _I'm in meetings most of the afternoon_. She had at least come down to the foyer of her building to hand over the charger. Still, Imogen had to admit that it had been quick thinking on Lorna's part to pick the charger up off the breakfast bar that morning after Imogen had left for work. _I can't afford to have my phone die on me today._ _Who knows who might try and contact me_. A quick glance in the glass revealed that her cheeks were flushed and her hair rather unruly, the result of her pounding along through the London streets. Finishing the rest of her coffee, she grabbed her bag off the counter top. Not carrying anything so lame as a compact, she decided to go to the toilets to tie her hair back and arrange herself.

'Did you know someone's watching you?'

Imogen looked with a start at the girl standing next to her at the bathroom sinks. The girl was tall, with long, wavy blonde hair and pale grey eyes. With a look of edgy impatience she watched Imogen finish tying her hair back.

'Err … should I be pleased or worried about that?' Imogen asked, trying to seem unflappable.

'Both,' replied the girl firmly. 'You should be worried about the person who followed you into this coffee shop and who's currently sitting a couple of tables away from where you were sitting. But you should be happy that we're watching the watcher.'

'Oh ok,' said Imogen, slightly exhausted by this barrage of information. 'So are you one of the …?'

'Yes,' said the girl.

'I suppose I shouldn't name names,' Imogen added.

'No,' said the girl. 'But what you can do, if you don't mind, that is, is help us with something.'

'What's that?'

'When you leave here, walk to London Bridge station and take a train to this address,' said the girl. When Imogen looked down a business card had already appeared next to the sink.

'The address is on the back,' said the girl.

_Same modus operandi as at the tube station_.

'The girl with the short black hair who followed you in here will follow you all the way. She'll think it most interesting that you're not heading back to the office or home.'

'Well I should really go back to the office …' Imogen began.

'You won't be missed,' said the girl. Rather ominously, Imogen thought.

'What do you mean?'

'They'll cover for you if necessary.'

Imogen nodded to herself once she had finished processing this.

'I see,' she said, 'this may all be true, but how do I know that the person I should be trusting is you and not the person waiting in the coffee shop?'

'Good point,' said the girl. 'In the train you'll see someone you know, who will confirm that everything's ok and that we're the ones you should trust.'

Suddenly the bathroom door opened.

'Ok?' asked the girl.

'Ok, said Imogen.

* * *

As she arrived at London Bridge station Imogen wondered if the fear was visible on her face. But the commuters thronging into the station were far too concentrated on catching their train home.

It was only once she had sat down in the train and started to compose herself that she realised she had no idea what she was getting herself into. So someone was following her, quite possibly sent by Marchelow. That was a serious matter, certainly, but taking part in some sort of entrapment operation with a group of unregistered wizards possibly wasn't a good idea. She had seen the girl with the short black hair someway down the platform at London Bridge, and she had seen her board the same train as her too. Whoever had ordered the girl to follow her wasn't going to be pleased when (or if) she was captured by free wizards. If Mr Marchelow had given the orders, it was likely to mean trouble for Imogen. But the fact that he had ordered someone to tail a member of his own staff was surely some sort of breach of ethics, though she suspected the staff regulations didn't go into such situations. She shifted nervously in her seat, apologising in a low voice as she gently elbowed the man crammed into the seat next to her.

Suddenly she had the impression that a light was shining in her eye. It couldn't be sunlight: the sun had already set. She glanced at the man next to her. His head was down in his newspaper. She looked down the carriage. The light flashed white for an instant then disappeared. To her surprise, standing at the far end of the carriage was Mr Laceby. He nodded swiftly to her then looked away. _That must be the signal_. Knowing that the plan had his blessing made her feel a bit better.

The train pulled into Deptford Station and disgorged a fair few of its passengers. She got off the train quickly and fell in with the stream of people passing down the platform and exiting the station. Deptford was not an area she had ever been to, but she knew she had to turn left out of the station.

Deptford High Street was animated by the typical early evening traffic both on the road and the pavements. She walked at a determined pace, repeatedly checking the numbering of the buildings. She paused in front of a tired, early Victorian three-storey building with a pub occupying its ground floor. According to her instructions, there was a door to the upstairs apartments just around the corner on a side street. She found the door, catching sight of the façade of a grand church set back from the road, at the end of a little park, behind metal gates.

By the door there were three buzzers with no names next to them: she had been told to ring the upper one. Before ringing she took one last glance back down the street; no sign of the girl who was following her. She rang the doorbell and almost immediately the door swung open. Standing behind it in a narrow hall was a young man with dark, unkempt hair and a boyish face. He was busy smothering a grin in a way that was rather charming. Only now did she realise that he was the hooded youth she had met on the tube station platform.

He silently beckoned her to step over the threshold and then moved aside, gesturing towards the flight of stairs in front of her. The hallway was not modern, but nor was it faded.

'Second floor,' he said in a low voice, quickly adding, 'we'll speak up there.'

They climbed the stairs, past a single closed door on the first floor landing, up to a small, similar landing on the second floor. Above them were a pitched roof and a skylight, the orange glare of the evening sky shining through it. The door wasn't locked, and they went inside, entering into a sober and sparsely furnished room that on one side served as a kitchen and on the other as a living room. There was a sofa with its back to the window, an old-looking armchair on the far wall and a table and chairs arranged in the middle of the room. The only way out of the room seemed to be another door on the far wall.

He intimated for Imogen to sit down at the table then sat down opposite her.

'Can we speak now?' asked Imogen in a loudish voice.

'Of course, sorry about that.'

'Can you tell me your name now?'

He smiled.

'Since we're working together now, I'd say so. I'm Caius.'

He stuck his hand out over the table. She took it firmly and they shook hands.

'So is this your flat?' she asked. Given the flat's intimidatingly sparse and appearance, she sort of hoped that it wasn't.

'No, we're just borrowing it. It's used for short-stay lets usually, as far as I know.'

'And what exactly is going to happen now?'

'We're going to kill two birds with one stone.'

'I hope you don't mean that literally.'

The ironic grin flashed again. He obviously did that a lot.

'Oh nothing like that, don't worry.'

'So what are the two birds then?'

'Well, to be more precise, we have a common problem to deal with. The person following you today also has orders to keep tabs on a friend of ours. A friend who was letting us use his flat as a safe house.'

'This person must be very busy.'

'So it would seem. I guess that she has a list of people to check up on. And you've just been added to that list.'

'Whose list is this?'

'Well, who have you annoyed recently?'

She reflected for a moment.

'Mr Marchelow.'

'Exactly. But that person following you isn't a fellow employee of the Agency for Magical Affairs.'

'Obviously not. I suppose you're going to tell me who she does work for though?'

'Certainly. She's a safe witch, in the pay of the Safe Magic Campaign.'

'So she works for Mr Morley.'

'Yes, and at the same time for Mr Marchelow.'

'Mr Marchelow has a conflict of interests.'

'That's putting it mildly.'

'But what are you going to do to this safe witch?'

'Question her.'

'Question her?'

'Don't worry, no thumb screws or anything like that. You'll need to hide though.'

'Where?'

'This way, please, Imogen,' came a voice from behind her. Imogen wheeled around. Mr Laceby was standing in the room. He had obviously entered through the other door.

'Sorry to have startled you, Imogen,' said Mr Laceby. 'But we need to leave now. The others are about to arrive.'

Caius nodded. Imogen looked from him to Mr Laceby.

'The others?' she asked, half-standing up.

'You'll find out everything you need to know in just a moment,' said Mr Laceby. He raised his hand, seemingly gesturing to her to get up.

After another brief hesitation she stood up and followed him silently through the other door. They passed along a narrow corridor leading to another door. Beyond that door was another flight of stairs.

'Where are we going?' said Imogen as they went down the stairs, which were narrower and dustier than the ones she had taken to go up to the second floor.

'We're just going down one floor,' he replied.

The flat below was obviously used as a sculptor's studio. Oddly shaped busts and figures, some human, some animal, some mythical, were stacked around the main room, the smaller ones on shelves and the larger ones on the floor. They passed through the studio into a smaller adjoining room. It was empty apart from a rather dusty, red two-seater sofa and a television set. Mr Laceby produced a remote control seemingly out of nowhere.

'CCTV,' he said quietly. 'It's rigged up so we can see what goes on upstairs.'

'Do these flats belong to you?' Imogen asked in an incredulous voice.

'They belong to my family, in a roundabout way,' he replied. 'My nephew lives here.'

'He's the sculptor, is he?'

'That's right.'

'Is he part of Caius's group?'

'The Coven of the White Tooth?' said Mr Laceby, so nonchalantly that he might have been talking about a five-a-side football team. 'No.'

'And I don't suppose you're a member of this coven?'

A faintly ironic smile appeared.

'Oh no, I don't have the right kind of ability for that.'

'Then what is your link to these people?'

'It's complicated,' he replied, his normal inscrutable look back on his face. Without another word he switched on the television.

Now sitting where Imogen had been sitting a few minutes earlier was the girl who had been tailing her. Her hands were bound in front of her. Caius had apparently not moved from his seat, but he had now been joined by the blonde girl who had approached Imogen in the girls' toilets. She had her hand on what looked like a magic wand in front of her on the table.

The safe witch was obviously scared. She looked out of her depth. She was tall and skinny, scarcely 20 by the look of her, with gentle brown eyes, and short dark hair that hung down limply, just covering her ears. She didn't look like she would be much use to the Safe Magic Campaign. Maybe her usefulness to Messrs Morley and Marchelow came from allowing herself to be captured and interrogated so that she could report back to her masters.

She looked bleakly at her captors, her gaze flitting from one to the other.

'You know what I dislike about London?' Caius began, in a bright sort of voice. 'It's the anonymity. It's just a constant stream of strangers, day after day.'

The girl stared at him.

'I come from a small town myself,' said the blonde girl, in the same urbane manner. 'You're always bumping into the same people. Admittedly, some of them are awful, but at least they have a certain familiarity, which I find sort of heartening.'

'Heartening, yes, that's the word,' said Caius, fixing the safe witch with a probing gaze. 'That's just what I feel when I keep seeing you all over London: first Exmouth Market, then Blackfriars Street, now Deptford as well. I may have to reassess my view of this city. Perhaps it is just a big village after all.'

The girl said nothing.

'And since I keep seeing you around, I feel like I want to get to know you.'

'Look, I've never even seen you before,' the girl said suddenly. 'I was just walking down the street and suddenly this girl grabs me and takes my wand off me.' She looked down at the wand on the table, held firmly under the blonde girl's hand.

'That's right, it's a coincidence that you were walking in a neighbourhood you don't live in, following someone from the Agency for Magical Affairs, wand in your pocket,' the blonde girl commented, her tone suddenly less friendly.

The prisoner's mouth grew a little smaller.

'What does it matter to you if I was asked to follow her? Perhaps someone has good reason to.'

'And what might that reason be?'

'I don't know. It's not my business to know.'

'I suppose not. You're just an underling. At least tell us your name.'

'I don't think it's any of your business.'

'You don't give out your name to people who interrupt you when you're spying on someone, I suppose. That's fair enough, Leah.'

The girl's eyes widened when Caius spoke the name. It was obviously the correct one.

'Leah Petrini, that's your name isn't it?'

The witch called Leah Petrini nodded. The look on her face was even bleaker.

'Look,' she began, a shiver running across her shoulders, 'I have a list of people and places I'm supposed to keep an eye on. That's all.'

'And Imogen Sontley is one of them?'

Leah Petrini nodded again. Imogen shot a glance across at Mr Laceby. His face was impassive as he followed what was happening on the screen.

'Why her?'

'She wants to contact free wizards. Like you I suppose.'

'Who says she's in contact with us?'

'Why else are you protecting her?'

Caius grinned maliciously.

'I'm afraid not,' he replied. 'We're following you to find out who you're following. And now we know that whoever ordered you to follow Imogen doesn't exactly mean her well.'

'In case there was any doubt,' added the blonde girl.

'I never said that,' said Leah.

'You assumed we're protecting her. You know she needs protection.'

'I don't know about that.'

'Fine, you don't know anything about the people you follow.'

'I don't really!'

All of a sudden the girl seemed exhausted.

'But you do report to someone …'

Leah looked at her wand.

'That won't work,' said Caius.

Leah looked at him sadly, apparently in recognition of this state of affairs.

'You may be wondering why no one's coming to rescue you,' said the blonde girl, her hand still fixed on Leah's wand.

'Yeah, it's funny that, isn't it?' said Caius. 'You'd think someone round here must be casting a spell to prevent you from doing magic.'

'Seems logical, doesn't it?' the blonde girl echoed. 'Only such a spell would be traced.'

'So there must be something else blocking you,' said Caius. 'Or else we've worked out how to fool the Array.'

'I doubt that very much,' said Leah in a cowed voice.

'Anyway,' Caius continued, 'now that you've understood that you've got no way of escaping us until we decide to let you go, it would be a good idea to tell us who you report to.'

Leah looked at them rather desperately.

'I can't,' she said. 'I'd get into too much trouble. I've signed a confidentiality agreement, a magically binding one.'

Caius and the blonde girl looked at each other.

'If it's not an unbreakable vow it can be got around,' she said. 'If that's something you're interested in.'

'I don't know,' said Leah, a flicker of interest in her eyes.

'Do you really need to be doing this?' the blonde girl continued. 'Why are you even working for the Safe Magic Campaign? Do you really believe in it?'

Leah shook her head in silence.

'How could you get around my vow?' she said finally, looking up.

'We know someone who's very good at those kinds of things,' said Caius. 'It won't be traced.'

'How?'

'I can't tell you that. Not yet anyway.'

'If you could really protect me, I could tell you,' said Leah, leaning forward over the table and looking pleadingly at them.

'We can.'

'How?'

'You already know we can,' said the blonde girl. 'Think how hard you tried to raise the alarm just now. And nothing happened.'

Leah seemed to reflect on this for a few moments then nodded.

'Ok,' she said. 'I don't like spying on people anyway.'

'So why are you a safe wizard?'

'The day the Ministry rose,' she said, 'I was caught escaping from Diagon Alley. The wizard who caught me said he wouldn't report me if I agreed to join the Safe Magic Campaign. He said it would be the intelligent thing to do anyway. Now that wizards had been exposed to the world it was going to be miserable for those who didn't want to confirm.. And the earlier I joined the campaign the better things would be for me.'

'Join the winning side, you mean,' remarked the blonde girl drily. Leah nodded.

'What's the name of this wizard?' asked Caius.

'Jack Painsmaye,' Leah replied. 'Have you heard of him?'

A grim look shot across Caius's face.

'More than that,' he replied. 'I saw him in action on the roof of the Ministry.'

'You were at the Ministry that day?'

Caius nodded.

'We both were,' he added, pointing to the blonde girl.

'You were defending it?'

'Yeah.'

'Wow,' said Leah. 'Talk about fighting a hopeless case.'

Caius grinned bleakly.

'We like to be on the losing side.'

'But about this Jack Painsmaye,' said the blonde girl. 'Didn't he mention that the point of the Safe Magic Campaign is to persecute wizards rather than integrate them into society?'

Leah blushed.

'He said he didn't decide on the policy.'

The blonde girl shot Caius an ironic glance.

'Anyway, he never said anything about _hunting_ them,' Leah added.

'Hunting them?' Caius echoed.

'I suppose you mean arresting free witches and wizards that are at large?' said the blonde girl.

'Not exactly.' Leah leaned over the table. 'Are you sure that you'll be able to protect me?'

The blonde girl reached out her hand and took hold of Leah's.

'We promise,' she said.

Leah contemplated their interlocked hands for a moment then looked up.

'They get a kick out of tracking down free wizards and arresting them. But it's just a foretaste of what's to come.'

'What _is_ to come?'

'The big hunt, that's what they call it.'

'What's that? They're planning to round us all up, are they?'

Leah swallowed and let go of the blonde girl's hand.

'It's more devious than that, to be honest.'

'What do you mean?'

'All this talk about keeping the wizards in detention until they've been processed is a cover. They're not really planning for the authorities to get their hands on them.'

Downstairs Imogen looked again at Mr Laceby, trying to get his attention. But his gaze was locked on the screen and a vein was pulsing in his temple.

'What are they going to do? The wizards are sitting there in the centre of London, in front of the entire country.'

'Exactly. So they're going to let them escape. Or go free. Whatever's more likely to go over well with the public.'

'Go free? What's the point of that?'

'So they can hunt them all down out of sight. That's the policy. That's what some of them call 'the big hunt'. And they can do what they like with them, because the authorities will never know exactly who's in there.'

'Doesn't the Agency for Magical Affairs have a list of who's in the Ministry?' said the blonde girl.

'Yes, but Mr Marchelow is in charge of it,' said Caius almost immediately with a groan.

'That's right,' said Leah grimly. 'The list will disappear.'

'And you were prepared to go along with all this?'

Leah looked uncomfortable.

'I would never have taken part in that. It's for the top people anyway. I could never do that sort of thing.'

A silence descended around the table. Downstairs Imogen began to stand up, but Mr Laceby shot out his arm to stop her. His hand was stone cold.

'There's more,' said Leah. 'The hope is that when the imprisoned wizards are allowed to escape, they'll run to their families and friends. Then the witch hunters can hunt them all. Mr Marchelow says the bodies will never be found.'

Suddenly the blonde girl took her hand off Leah's wand.

'What is it?' asked Leah Petrini nervously.

'They've broken through,' said the blonde girl. For the first time that evening her face showed fear.

At the same time Mr Laceby groaned loudly and grabbed Imogen's arm to steady himself. His face was white.

'I can't hold them back anymore,' he said weakly as he swayed to his feet. 'I must warn them.'

'Mr Laceby!' said Imogen, suddenly alarmed by his altered state. Mr Laceby was already at the door. He turned back. 'What's happening?' she asked.

'We will be traced,' he said. 'And very soon. We will need to leave here quickly. All of us. Wait here until I come back.'

Imogen nodded and he left the room instantly. She stood up and went quickly to the window. She opened the net curtain and looked out into the night sky. Feeling hot and flushed, she unlatched the window and leaned out a little. Over the sound of the traffic, she could hear shouting coming from down below, then the sound of breaking glass. Then she heard the sound of heavy footsteps running down the stairs. The next moment Mr Laceby was back.

'They're in the bar downstairs,' he said tersely. 'Someone was clever enough to divert them into the bar by casting a spell.'

Imogen wasn't exactly sure what he meant, but she understood who had arrived.

'They found out?' she asked, her throat tightening as she spoke.

Mr Laceby nodded.

'I couldn't hold them any longer,' he said. 'The effort was too great.'

'So what are we going to do now?'

'We're going to leave now, walk down the stairs and go out the back door.'

'Is there time?'

'Yes, if we leave now.'

They went quickly down the back stairs. When they reached the entrance hall, a side door was open, and a young man stood in the doorway. He had long dark hair and a neatly trimmed goatee. He was leaning heavily against the wall, his white shirt stained with blood.

'Darius!' said Mr Laceby.

'I'll be alright,' said the man called Darius.

In the hall the sounds of a struggle could be heard much more loudly: they were coming from the bar on the other side of the wall.

'A car will be waiting for you behind the church,' said Mr Laceby, turning to Imogen.

'Who's driving it?' said Imogen.

'It doesn't matter now, just go,' said Darius weakly.

At that moment they were joined by the three people they had just been watching on the television screen. Leah Petrini gawped at Imogen, her face twisted with fear.

'Imogen is leaving now,' said Mr Laceby.

Caius looked around the group and then in the direction of the bar.

'You should go too,' he said to Leah Petrini.

'With her?' asked Leah doubtfully.

'Yes, with her.'

'Apparently there's a car waiting for us out the back,' said Imogen.

'We'll join you in a minute,' said Caius. 'We just have to see what's happening in there,' he added, looking towards the bar.

'Nothing very pleasant,' said Darius. He was still losing blood.

There was another loud crash.

'Come _on_,' said Leah suddenly, grabbing Imogen by the arm and pulling her out of the door. They found themselves in a narrow, triangular-shaped yard, paved over and stacked with empty crates. There was a door in the wooden fence, and it was open. They ran across the yard, then out into the street. Imogen glanced back for a moment, but Caius, Mr Laceby and the others were already gone.

The side street they found themselves on was empty. One side of the street was lined with the back walls of houses, the other with railings and a row of trees. Above the trees, the illuminated white façade of the church loomed up into the night sky. They walked down the street as quickly as possible, turning left at the first junction so that they remained close to the perimeter of the churchyard. A little way down the street a single car was parked, and as they approached they could make out someone sitting in the driver's seat. They drew alongside the car and Imogen reached out and tapped the back window. The driver turned around and the car door swung open.

'Get in,' he hissed. Imogen and Leah looked at one another.

'Is this a good idea?' Leah murmured.

'I haven't got any better ones,' Imogen replied, her hand shaking as she opened the door to the back seat.

The two girls bundled themselves into the back seat, breathing heavily.

'Good evening,' said the driver more pleasantly, turning round in his seat. As he turned, Imogen recognised him.

'You gave me the travelcard in the tube station!' she exclaimed.

He made the briefest of nods in return.

'So you work with Caius?'

He nodded again.

'Where are Caius and Meredith?' he asked.

'Err … they said they'd come in a minute.'

He looked at his watch.

'They'd better get here soon.'

Time seemed to pass very slowly as they sat in the car. Silence and stillness seemed to envelop them. At last they heard footsteps racing down the street. The driver immediately turned the engine on. The doors were wrenched open and two more people jumped into the car, breathing heavily. Caius leapt into the front seat and the blonde girl, whose name was Meredith, Imogen supposed, sat down in the seat next to her.

'Go!' shouted Caius, and the driver sped off. They had barely set off when a figure suddenly appeared in the middle of the road. He was grinning at them, his wand outstretched.

'Hand over the traitor!' he shouted, his magically amplified voice reverberating around the car.

'Oh shit, it's Jack!' shouted Leah, ducking down.

Jack Painsmaye fired off a curse at the oncoming car, which shot from his wand in the form of a ball of fire that seemed to expand in every direction as it came nearer. But Caius was already hanging out of the window, firing off a counter-curse that dispersed the growing curtain of fire. Then he reconfigured the fire so that instead of obstructing their way, it formed a kind of burning cloak around the car. It sped towards Jack Painsmaye, who disapparated at the last moment.

'Ah, it feels good to do magic once in a while!' Caius exclaimed as he sat back down in his seat.

'Where's Mr Laceby?!' shouted Imogen. Caius turned to her with a grin.

'Don't worry about him,' he replied. 'When it comes to slipping away into the night, there's no one better. Which is what we had better do now.'

He flourished his wand and the flames around the car faded. Then they turned the corner and sped away into the night.


	56. The penitence of Lillian Herrick - Ch 9

9\. Roads to nowhere

The sky was an angry orange at sunset, catching Ron Weasley by surprise as he walked out through the gates of the industrial estate. On the first stretch of street he paused, soaking up what was left of the sun's warmth, his limbs stiff after a day's physical labour.

The street that led from the warehouse to the bus stop took him in less than five minutes from the modern outskirts of the town into its old core of narrow medieval lanes and finally to its wide high street. Someone pushed past him as he ambled past the closing shops, tutting as they went. At that moment, he felt his phone vibrate in his pocket.

_Could you pick up a jar of chutley on your way home?_ The message was from his father, who had taken to life among the muggles with aplomb, becoming a keen user of his mobile phone into the bargain. His mother, on the other hand, wouldn't have anything to do with them, and so Arthur Weasley was frequently called on to send out messages to his offspring, to request that they get something from a shop. Mr Weasley had got quite good at the most common of foodstuffs, but sometimes Mrs Weasley required items that could perhaps be called exotic. A couple of weeks earlier, Ginny had been asked to bring home a bottle of balsa wood vinegar.

The Weasleys had disapparated from Muirton Tower one after the other, after a night spent on the 23rd floor. Having decided that there was no point in heading for Ottery St Catchpole, their first port of call had been a bungalow on the outskirts of a nondescript London commuter town, where Mr Weasley's squib cousin Wilfred lived. Putting up the entire Weasley family in cousin Wilfred's two-bedroom bungalow was only ever going to be the most temporary of solutions. Mrs Weasley and Ginny had shared a bed in the spare room, while Mr Weasley and three of his sons had been accommodated on the living room floor. The arrangement lasted for the best part of a week. Cousin Wilfred took them in with as much good humour as he could muster, but his genuine pleasure at having company was tempered by fear of the reaction of suspicious neighbours at his sudden influx of guests. The Weasleys' stay was complicated by their having to stay away from the windows and the garden, keep their voices down and hide whenever there was a knock at the door. Fortunately, Cousin Wilfred's neighbours seemed unaware of his numerous houseguests, and no witch-hunters or lynch mobs were seen or heard on the dreary modern estate where he lived.

From Cousin Wilfred's bungalow, they had wandered vaguely eastwards, passing into an area of flat, sparsely populated farmland, sleeping first in country pubs, and then, when their muggle money began to run low, risking the use of the family tent at campsites. After a very tense first night in the tent, they soon decided that the magical trace it emitted was too low to be detected.

Wherever they travelled, they went under an alias. For the first couple of weeks, the alias varied from pub to pub or from campsite to campsite until they settled, at Ginny's suggestion, on the name of Macarthur. _And what will my name be?_ Mr Weasley had asked. _Isn't Arthur Macarthur a bit conspicuous?_ They had agreed it was. In the end he opted for Keith on the grounds that it was the most mugglish name he could think of.

They were wandering largely without maps, sticking to country lanes and bridleways and following the directions to whatever the nearest inhabited place was marked on the signposts. Their rambling eastward in this manner was soon brought to a halt by the realisation that they had entered the narrowing point of a peninsula. When the roads petered out into marshland on every side, they beat a retreat westwards, following a broad river for what seemed like miles in search of a bridge, cursing the fact that magic could take them to the other bank in an instant. Having crossed the river and skirted past the sprawling modern suburbs of a larger town, they found another stretch of similar, flat farmland open up before them. Again they wandered eastwards, for a time following a railway branch line until it reached its back-of-beyond terminus. From there they pressed on from village to village, past neatly tended fields, gradually taking a more northerly direction. Eventually they found water barring their way again, and after sending Ron and Ginny out to make discrete enquiries in a Muggle post office, they learned that once again they had become hemmed in by a peninsula. They turned back, again journeying westwards along a broad estuary with low, marshy banks on both sides. They crossed the river in a small quaint town and again headed northeast.

As long as the weather held up, it was almost pleasant to travel across country, as if they were on a family holiday. But wet weather found them before long, and after a couple of days under grey, drizzle-filled skies, coupled with the realisation that their muggle funds were running seriously low, the decision was taken to settle in a town somewhere. According to the radio reports, anti-wizard vigilante activity was dying down. Therefore, it was presumed that if you didn't use magic, you wouldn't be caught. They had no particular destination, and were passing through lands in which no Weasley had ever set foot. The road trip had brought home to Mr and Mrs Weasley how little they knew of muggle society or even of the geography of the nondescript muggle towns and villages that covered great swathes of the countryside, seemingly remote from the wizarding geography of Britain. After a lengthy debate under canvas that stretched well into the night, they decided to return to Tydwalderton, the market town where they had crossed the river. It had seemed like a nice enough place.

The family relied on Ginny, and most of all on Ron, as their liaison with muggle society. One day Ginny came home with the news that she had got herself a job working in the stables at a riding school. Since finding work was the only way of avoiding severe poverty, Ron quickly followed suit, managing to get himself hired at a fruit and vegetable packing warehouse. Once Ron had his foot in the door, the foreman was only too pleased to learn that he had a brother who was also looking for work, and in this way George soon joined him. Only Percy recoiled at the idea of menial work among the muggles, and instead stayed at home with his parents, who were too much at risk of drawing attention to themselves. With three wages coming in, the family managed to rent a small terraced house in a village a few miles outside the town.

Ron yawned, feeling the effects of another day spent packing crates of vegetables, and made his way to join the scattering of people already waiting for the bus. Propping himself up against the inside of the bus shelter, he looked out vacantly at the street in front of him. Just opposite the bus stop stood a Victorian pub, the Tournier Hotel, which loomed over the surrounding buildings, its whitewashed walls dingy and rather tired. Ron occasionally stopped for a pint there, but he didn't much like drinking on his own, and George was working a different shift from him. The interior of the Tournier Hotel was just as tired as its exterior, but after a day of carrying crates around a warehouse, its beer held a strong allure. He looked across the road at the windows of the Tournier Hotel with a vague sense of longing.

As he looked, a tall, rangy figure in a long dark coat cut across his field of view. Ron watched carefully as the man pushed open the door to the Tournier Hotel and went inside. There had been something familiar about him. Ron continued to lean against the bus stop, now debating whether it was worth missing the next bus to have a quick drink in the Tournier after all and find out whether the man in the trench coat was who he thought he was. _And if it is who I think it is, do I even want to speak to him?_ About three minutes had elapsed before he got up with a silent curse at himself and crossed the road.

The pub's interior was refreshingly dark, and there were few people drinking within. Ron positioned himself at the near end of the bar. He leaned subtly forward and glanced over his shoulder, thus managing to scan most of the bar in one single sweep. He swallowed a lump in his throat: he had been right: there was Draco Malfoy, receding hair dyed jet black, sitting on his own in a booth and gazing sadly up at the bar as he drank his pint. The dyed black hair and long black coat made Malfoy look like an ageing goth, Ron reflected, rather pleased at himself for nailing the comparison.

Before Ron had time to decide what to do, the barmaid was in front of him, smiling pleasantly and asking him what he wanted to drink. After a quick survey of the beer taps, Ron ordered a pint of real ale from a local brewery. He leaned on the bar and began to sip from his pint, positioning himself at an angle from which it was possible to keep Malfoy in his field of view. Judging by Malfoy's agitated state and the fact that he kept glancing down at his watch, Ron surmised that he was waiting for someone. Ron continued to watch him out of the corner of his eye: now he noticed that between checking his watch and scanning the bar, Malfoy would fall into a kind of reverie, staring with a wide-eyed expression up at the bar. Following the direction of Malfoy's gaze, Ron found the object of his reverie to be the barmaid, his half-mesmerised gaze following her every movement back and forth at the bar. She was tall, with kind, but slightly angular features framed by auburn-brown hair, and wore a mauve scarf around her neck. Ron wondered to himself what the likelihood was of a witch from a pureblood wizarding family working behind the bar in a muggle pub. There was nothing particularly witch-like about the girl. _But these days you never know._ Apparently even the Malfoys had to make the best of it among the Muggles. Deciding that it was better not to wait for Malfoy's appointment to arrive, Ron got up from the bar and ambled warily over to where he was sitting.

'Long time no see,' began Ron in a voice that was less assured than he had intended.

The look of irritation on Malfoy's face at being disturbed from his reverie rapidly turned to one of wide-eyed amazement as he saw who was standing in front of him. He gulped down a mouthful of air, which seemed to choke him, and beckoned for Ron to sit down, coughing as discreetly as possible into his sleeve. Ron sat down at the table and waited for Malfoy to compose himself.

'What are you doing here?' said Malfoy in a loud, agitated whisper, glancing around the quiet and virtually empty bar. 'Are you alone?' His face was thinner and older than Ron remembered him, and his clothes were somewhat battered. Ron deduced that the Malfoys, like many wizarding families, were on the road in some capacity or other. The state of complete alienation from muggle society in which the Malfoys had always lived no doubt made living in the outside world harder and more bitter than it had been for the Weasleys.

'Calm down,' replied Ron. 'I'm alone. And believe me, I'm not going to advertise how we know one another. I'm hardly going to pretend that we're friends, but I don't often run into … someone I went to school with, particularly not these days.'

'Oh forget it, Wea …,' Malfoy began in a low voice, stopping himself before he pronounced Ron's family name. 'I suppose we're almost on the same side at the moment, anyway.' His eyes drifted back to the bar, the glowering expression on his face turning to one of wistful resignation.

Ron looked over at Malfoy and to his surprise, he found himself cracking a half-smile.

'Nice girl that, behind the bar,' he said with a nod in her direction. Malfoy turned to him and shot him a rather savage look.

'I'm not interested myself, mind,' Ron continued, as affably as he could bear. 'It's just I noticed she seems to have caught your eye. Is she … one of us?' He couldn't believe that he had just used the words _one of us_ in connection with Draco Malfoy. Malfoy's face now seemed to express a kind of watery melancholy.

'Not in the slightest,' he said, shaking his head grimly. 'Not even a … squib.' The last word was almost inaudible, and Malfoy glanced about himself darkly as soon as he spoke it.

'Well, don't let that put you off,' said Ron in the sort of jocular tone he once saved for the Gryffindor Common Room. Malfoy shot him a withering look.

'Do you imagine that I've sunk so low as to …?' he muttered, his sentence trailing off into a baleful silence. Then straight away he glanced up at the bar again and his dark expression seemed to brighten again. He turned back to Ron with a changed, almost conspiratorial tone.

'I can't help myself,' he began. 'I come in here all the time just to look at her, have little conversations with her. It's humiliating, but I can't do anything about it. I never imagined a muggle could be … '

'Nice?' Ron suggested, trying to smother a grin.

Malfoy seemed lost in his contradictory feelings.

'Well, it's a brave new world we're living in,' he began, rather pleased to have remembered another muggle cultural reference. He almost felt like giving Malfoy a slap on the back. Malfoy looked at him blankly: the remark clearly meant nothing to him.

'Anyway,' Ron continued, 'I suppose we've got to make the most of things. If there was ever a time to do something new, now would be the time to do it. It's not like you have to marry her or anything.'

Malfoy listened to Ron's advice with an arch expression.

'I've got your blessing, have I?' he replied drily. 'I can't tell you how glad that makes me.'

They both took a swig from their pints, and Malfoy glanced again at his watch.

'But it's rather too much of a coincidence to find you here, don't you think?' He began in an altered tone, looking up from his watch with a strange expression. 'Don't tell me you've got an appointment with the Tourniers …'

Ron looked blankly at him.

'Who are they, the owners of this pub?' he asked.

Malfoy scrutinised Ron, trying to tell if Ron was trying to trick him.

'You mean you don't know who the Tourniers are?' said Malfoy. His voice was sarcastic, like the Malfoy of old.

Ron thought for a moment. If the Tourniers were of interest to Draco Malfoy, they must be wizards. After all there was something familiar about the name. It had struck him the first time he had seen it written on the sign that swung from the side of the pub. It reminded him of his days in the Auror Office, but of late, as soon as a memory of those times surfaced he would brush it away. The Auror Office led him to Harry, and from Harry to Hermione, and then to Harry and Hermione. He considered the name Tournier again.

'There was a Tournier implicated in the Belhaine affair,' said Ron, grimly remembering his finest hour as an Auror. Now he could put a face to the name of Tournier.

'Edmund Tournier. Worked in International Relations. He knew about the plot to assassinate the Minister and did nothing. Was never proved to be a member of Citadel though, so he got away with a suspension. So is that who we're talking about?'

'Very good, Weas …' Malfoy's voice trailed off again. 'But of course you only see things through your narrow Auror point of view,' he hissed, lowering his voice further so as to be sure that only Ron could hear him. 'The Tourniers are an ancient and well-respected wiz … family. They own most of this town and all the farmland you can see for miles, so I wouldn't be surprised if they owned this pub too. Their peculiarity is that while part of the family lived … _within our world_ … another branch of the family ran very successful business interests in the mug … outside world. The result being that the family hasn't been affected by this … _aberration _… (muttered through gritted teeth) in the same way as other families.'

Ron glanced around him, as if to look for some sign of the omnipotence of the Tournier family.

'So what are _you_ doing here, anyway?' Malfoy asked in a tone of peevish curiosity.

There didn't seem much point at trying to conceal the truth. In any case, Malfoy had been surprisingly frank with him.

'We've been moving across country since the Ministry thing, and just ended up here by chance,' said Ron finally. 'We, or at least I, had no idea who the Tourniers are or that they own this part of the country.'

Malfoy seemed relieved at this information. He looked around the pub and then down at his watch.

'Well, as much as I enjoyed catching up, Weas … you're going to have to clear off now,' he said pointedly. 'Unlike you, I do have an appointment with the Tourniers.'

'What for?' said Ron. 'Do you think they're going to shelter you or something?'

Malfoy didn't answer, so Ron guessed that he was right.

'Are you here on your own or is the whole family here?' he asked snidely as he got up from the table.

Again Malfoy didn't answer.

'Say hello to your mother then,' said Ron. It was common knowledge that Lucius Malfoy had died the previous year.

'I'm sure she'll be delighted to receive _your_ salutations,' replied Malfoy, shooting him a vaguely dirty look.

Ron walked away from Malfoy's table, but found himself a discreet corner to finish his beer and see whether Malfoy's appointment turned up. A few minutes later, a tall and rather flamboyant man with long dark hair tied back in a ponytail and dressed in a long black coat strode into the bar.

'Giacomo!' came Malfoy's voice from across the bar. The man nodded affably to Malfoy, who scurried over to join him at the bar. Malfoy whispered something to the man named Giacomo, but the man evidently refused him. Malfoy then went about ordering drinks in an overly jovial manner, cracking a joke to the barmaid at which all three laughed. Ron drank his beer solemnly as he watched them disappear out of his field of view. He sat quietly, catching snatches of conversation, mostly when Malfoy, who had seemingly had one too many already, raised his voice. In any case, Malfoy appeared to be doing most of the talking, pleading the case, as Ron surmised, for the Tournier family to shelter the Malfoys. After a while their voices could no longer be heard. As they had to go past his table in order to exit the bar, Ron kept his eyes trained ahead of him. Having finished his drink, and judging that Malfoy and Giacomo had left, he got up to leave.

Outside the light was fading fast. _Just how long have I been in the pub?_ He stepped out to cross the road but almost immediately was pulled back and dragged into an alleyway. Cursing his stupidity, he struggled to break free, but the grip he was held in was too strong.

'Calm down, Weasley,' said a voice in his ear. Rough hands turned around so that he found himself facing Malfoy and Giacomo. Giacomo looked at him with an impassive expression. The sinister grin on Malfoy's lips and the dim light in the alleyway seemed to make him look like in Hogwarts times.

'Do you think that you'll stand a better chance of being taken under the Tourniers' protection if you turn in an Auror?' said Ron. His remark drew a snort of amusement from Giacomo, but Malfoy's face went even paler than usual.

'You know, something's going to have to be done about this,' said Giacomo Tournier nonchalantly. 'At this rate half of the wizards in Britain are going to be seeking shelter at my father's house.'

'I should warn you, the Weasleys are particularly numerous,' remarked Malfoy. Ron shot him a withering look.

'What makes you think we're looking for protection from your family? Just because the Malfoys can't cut it in the muggle world, doesn't mean the Weasleys can't. We've been coping perfectly well by ourselves, thank you very much.'

'For the second time calm down, Weasley,' said Malfoy. 'We're all wizards together here. Isn't that right, Giacomo?'

'Quite so,' said Giacomo. 'In any case, it wasn't your friend Draco who gave you away. I spotted you from the moment I entered the pub. Did you think I wouldn't recognise Ron Weasley? I'll admit to being a bit suspicious when I first saw you, but Draco here has vouched for you. He assured me that you and your family have been roaming the countryside and are here in town by coincidence. And after all, the Auror Office has well and truly been put out of business, along with everything else in our world.'

Ron looked suspiciously at them. The idea of Malfoy sticking up for him was unusual to say the least.

'By the way,' added Malfoy drily, 'as for cutting it in the muggle world, I can't see why you would bother. But then again, you've always had a passion for them. I just thought you might have learnt your lesson after what your muggle-born girlfriend did to you.'

The remark rankled. He had become expert at putting Hermione out of his mind, but Malfoy parading his humiliation in front of him was too much to bear.

'Listen to the hypocrite!' he shouted. 'Half an hour ago you were crying into your pint, lovesick over the muggle barmaid!'

Giacomo laughed out loud and Malfoy glowered at Ron.

'Infatuated with our Jasmine!' he crowed, turning to Malfoy with a broad grin. 'How touching! So it turns out you're less prejudiced than we thought! Unless of course you thought that Jasmine is a witch?'

'I know she's not,' muttered Malfoy in reply, a sad look on his face. 'And anyway, it's a passing infatuation.'

'Oh no, no need for that, Draco,' Giacomo continued. 'She's a lovely girl: sensible, homely, down to earth. I wish the two of you all the best. I've always thought she was wasted as a barmaid. She'll make a lovely mistress of Malfoy Manor.'

'Malfoy Manor burned to the ground!' wailed Malfoy in reply, his face convulsing in misery, possibly as much at the fate of his family estate as at the prospect of a muggle installed as Lady of the Manor.

Ron stared at Malfoy. It was news to him that Malfoy Manor had burned down, presumably the result of an anti-wizarding hate crime. It was likely that the Malfoys had never taken much care to integrate themselves into the local non-magical community. He almost felt sorry for him.

'Well, I can see you've all got a lot to discuss,' he said in an affable tone. 'It's about time I got back to roaming the country with the rest of my family.'

Giacomo smiled at him, a rather unencouraging smile. Ron could hear the sound of an engine running nearby, and a smell of exhaust fumes reached his nostrils. He looked down the alleyway and saw a car waiting at the end of it, headlights on and its engine running.

'Before you do, I think my father would like a word with you.'

'Thanks, ' said Ron with mock affability, struggling to break free. 'But I think I'll be going anyway. You give me his address and we'll make an appointment.'

'Ah, that won't be necessary,' said Giacomo. 'Best strike while the iron's hot. Eh, Draco?'

Malfoy nodded eagerly and together they manhandled Ron back down the alleyway and into the back of the waiting car.


	57. The penitence of Lillian Herrick - Ch 10

10\. A gathering of wands

The car door opened and Ron was shoved out into the evening air, almost tripping on the gravel underfoot. He looked up with a sense of foreboding, only to find himself in front of a smart, whitewashed three-storey Georgian villa. The house was light and urbane, and the only thing that struck him as being even vaguely wizardish about it was the square tower protruding from one end of the house, with an overhanging pitched roof somewhat reminiscent of a witch's hat. The top floor of the tower was encased in glass and had a viewing platform wrapped around it, making it look like some kind of watchtower.

'At least it looks a bit more cheerful than Malfoy Manor,' he remarked.

'Hilarious,' came the reply, as Malfoy pushed past him and went up the steps into the house.

'This is Lightfoot House,' said Giacomo Tournier, standing next to him and seemingly admiring the elegant façade of the family seat. 'Currently also serving as a sort of hotel for displaced wizards.'

'I already told you,' Ron replied, 'my family isn't looking for a place to stay. We already have somewhere perfectly suitable.'

'Yes I know, Smithy Cottage in Wickham Major,' said Giacomo in a vaguely amused tone. 'Rather cramped, given how many there are of you.'

'How do you know where I live?' said Ron, turning angrily towards Giacomo.

'We're the Tourniers,' he replied in a matter of fact voice. 'We know everything that happens round here. Particularly which wizards are moving through the neighbourhood. I think you'll all like it better here.'

'What are you talking about?' said Ron. Giacomo was already looking back at the house, a satisfied look on his face.

'Don't worry Ron, it's all going to be ok,' came a voice that made him wheel around in surprise. Ginny was standing in the doorway of Lightfoot House.

'What are you doing here?' exclaimed Ron. He wasn't sure if he should be pleased to see Ginny or even more worried than he already was.

'Come inside and we'll talk about it,' said Ginny, stepping down off the threshold and taking Ron gently by the arm.

'See, you had nothing to worry about,' said Giacomo, smirking beside him. 'All the family's here.'

Ron was about to retort, but Ginny tugged him to one side.

'It's not as bad as you think,' she said.

Ron glared at Giacomo, who smiled in return then headed inside. When he reached the doorstep, he turned for a moment.

'You'll be expected at the meeting,' he said in a more serious tone. 'In my father's study, in one hour.'

Then he disappeared inside.

Ginny led Ron down a broad, elegant white-washed hallway. At the end of the hallway Ron just had time to glimpse a vast, modern kitchen and dining area seemingly covering the entire rear of the house and opening out onto a terrace. Then Ginny led him on to where the hall branched to the left, leading to a flight of stairs. As he followed her up the stairs and along a smart, oak-floored landing, past numerous doors, it struck Ron that he had never been inside a wizard's house that looked like this: it was sleek, contemporary and elegant, but not how a wizard would understand the words. It looked remarkably muggle-like, to the extent that it was the sort of house that muggles would rave about on television. On the rare occasions when Hermione had actually sat down with Ron to watch television, she had seemed to get some sort of enjoyment out of programmes about muggles wanting to buy houses.

They turned again to the left, where the corridor finished in a kind of alcove with two doors facing each other on either side of it.

'That's Mum and Dad's room,' she said, pointing to the door on the left. 'And Percy and George are in there,' she added, with a vague gesture towards the other door.

'And where are you then?' asked Ron, in as withering a tone as he could muster.

'Just down the hall,' she replied quickly.

'What, do you get your own room?'

'No, I'm sharing with Hortensia.'

'Hortensia who?'

'Hortensia Cradock, of course.'

'The Cradocks are here too?'

It was starting to sound like half of Ottery St Catchpole was staying at Lightfoot House.

'Yes, Mr and Mrs Cradock and Hortensia's brothers are in the room next to mine.'

'Didn't Hortensia Cradock go off to work at Beauxbatons?'

'I thought you might remember that detail, Ron.'

'So how come she's back here and not in France?'

'What was she supposed to do, stay there with no news of her family?'

'I suppose not. Although you all came here without telling me. Nice of you to let me know.'

'There wasn't time. We only got here this afternoon.'

'I didn't expect you to send me a Patronus,' Ron remarked, sticking to the same withering tone. 'A text would have done the trick.'

'Well, we're all here now,' replied Ginny, shrugging her shoulders and then knocking on the door.

Mrs Weasley opened the door, hugged Ginny and Ron in quick succession and then marshalled them inside, almost as if she was in her own house. Their room was large, comfortable and neutrally decorated, but this had been offset somewhat by the ramshackle collection of half-unpacked suitcases and bags strewn this way and that. As Mrs Weasley fussed around them, Mr Weasley sat meditatively at the end of a king size bed. He rose swiftly and greeted them with a slightly sheepish smile.

'Right then … What on earth is going on?!' said Ron, launching forth with pent up frustration. Settling into a comfortable armchair, his father calmly outlined the events of that day. Shortly after lunch, Mr Weasley had opened the door of their cottage to none other than Edmund Tournier himself. After months of hiding out in muggle society, finding a wizard on the doorstep had come as something of a relief, even to Mr Weasley. Having unknowingly found themselves in Edmund Tournier's 'neck of the woods', as he put it, they were half expecting him to politely ask them to move on, in case they might put him at risk of being outed as a wizard. Instead, he not only told them that they were welcome to stay in the area if they wished, but wouldn't they rather consider coming to stay with him, at least for a few days. Mr Weasley had been forming reservations in his mind as he listened, wondering how exactly to phrase them. But when Mr Tournier revealed that his home was already serving as a kind of temporary shelter for a large number of wizards, including their old neighbours the Cradocks, he decided to put the reservations to one side, at least temporarily. And there had been a more specific invitation that Mr Weasley felt they couldn't pass up on:

'_A conclave of wizards will be held this evening_,' Mr Tournier had told them. '_I am simply providing the venue, mind. We will have wizards of all persuasions_. _Everyone's voice will be heard_.'

Ron scowled as he considered the information, more perplexed than angry.

'Don't you think it's a bit suspicious?' he began at last. 'Wizards of all persuasions? This Tournier had links to Belhaine.'

'It is a bit suspect, Ron,' said Mr Weasley. 'But right now, I'm prepared to go out there and meet just about anyone from the wizarding world.'

About half an hour later there was a knock at the door. When Ron answered it, he found himself looking at a vivacious teenage witch with shimmering blonde hair bearing a message from her father that the meeting was about to start. The Weasley family in its entirety followed her back along the corridor and then up two more flights of stairs to Mr Tournier's study.

Edmund Tournier's study occupied the entire top floor of the turret of Lightfoot House. It was a sweeping space, with a high wooden-vaulted ceiling and walls lined with bookshelves. The furniture was light, modern and comfortable, in keeping with the rest of the house. During the day, the study must have been flooded with light, but just then it was offering a panoramic view of darkened countryside. Edmund Tournier's guests were arranged on leather sofas, around a strikingly large coffee table. They turned to face the door as the Weasleys entered. Some got to their feet, others remained seated.

Ron looked at the assembled company in front of him, his gaze alighting straight away on a familiar group of wizards gathered around the wizened figure of Gondulph Belhaine himself. Without thinking, he took out his wand, and the other Weasleys rapidly followed suit. Within moments it seemed like the entire room had taken out their wands and had them trained either on the Weasleys or on some other member of the company. They stared at each other in tense silence, waiting to see whether someone would discharge their wand, probably for the first time in months.

'Ladies and gentlemen, please.'

A warm and melodious voice punctured the silence. Edmund Tournier was in the middle of the room, interposing himself between the massed ranks of pointed wands.

'I know you couldn't seriously be thinking of doing anything so … imprudent. So please, lower your wands.'

He was a tall man of about fifty, with a trimmed, charcoal-coloured beard and thick dark hair flecked with grey, tied back in a ponytail. His tone was jovial, but tinged with unmistakable authority. Soon the wands were lowered.

'First of all, I'd like to thank Arthur Weasley and his family for joining us at short notice,' he continued, gesturing for the Weasley family to take a seat among the gathering. 'I'm sure I don't need to remind you of what they did for us, and the sacrifice made, at the Battle of Hogwarts. I'm sure I also don't need to remind you that among them is Mr Ron Weasley, whose reputation speaks for itself.'

There was a ripple of indistinct murmuring as the Weasleys sat down.

'Now,' said Tournier, his sharp grey eyes fixed on the Weasley family, 'Mr Gondulph Belhaine I feel sure you know.'

Belhaine bowed coolly from his seat. He seemed smaller and even more wizened than Ron remembered.

'We also have with us Mr Xavier Belhaine, Mr Stanislas Pizzuoli, Mr Edmund Glimlatch, Mr Eustace Toussaint, Mr Antonin Martell, Mr Waldemar Lysight, Mr Tobias Destrument and Miss Enid Blackledge.'

_Where's Lashburn?_ Ron knew most of the names, since he had been involved in their capture at the safe house in Ostend. Obviously they had successfully managed to escape from Azkaban, or whatever remained of it, but as to how this had been achieved, Ron had no idea. None of them seemed any the worse for the time spent in Azkaban. Ron fixed his gaze on Tobias Destrument, who was sitting smartly at Belhaine's right hand. That night in Ostend, Destrument had seemed the most dangerous of the wizards guarding Belhaine. He returned Ron's gaze with a studied scowl.

The only one he'd never seen before was Enid Blackledge, although he knew the name well enough from the Belhaine file. But now he had seen her, sitting on the sofa next to Tobias Destrument, it occurred to Ron that she was easy to miss. She was thin and pale, sickly pale even, with grey eyes and ash blonde hair. She was Tobias Destrument's half-sister, and so also Belhaine's granddaughter. As Ron looked at her, he could make out a strong resemblance between Tobias and Enid, only it seemed like all the vitality had come to Destrument, leaving Enid a kind of sad, bleached-out copy of her brother. Sensing Ron's gaze, she made eye contact for the briefest moment then looked pointedly straight through him.

Edmund Tournier retook his seat among his family, just to the left of the Belhaine contingent. A tall, elegant and well-preserved blonde woman that Ron took to be Mrs Tournier sat at his side. Mr and Mrs Tournier were flanked by their children, seated as if they were posing for some kind of family portrait. Next to Edmund Tournier sat Giacomo, and next to Mrs Tournier were the teenaged girl who had been their guide and a smaller, but equally blonde boy of about twelve. Introduced as Coralia and Dmitri, the two younger Tournier children bowed and smiled winningly to the gathering.

The Malfoys sat on the other side of the Belhaines. There were only two of them: Draco Malfoy and his mother, Narcissa, her face tired and lined. They sat watching the proceedings with a kind of grim satisfaction.

Positioned rather awkwardly next to the Malfoys, Ron recognised his old neighbours from Ottery St Catchpole, Jethro Cradock, a gangling, jovial man with a receding ponytail and large round glasses, and his daughter Hortensia. Ron had always tended to avoid her on the grounds that from childhood his mother had thought she would make a nice wife for him. To Hortensia's credit, she had certainly never shown any inclination for him. Now, as she sat on the sofa next to her father, recently returned from Beauxbatons, Ron couldn't help wondering if something of that school had rubbed off on her. She seemed taller, more aloof and more confident; her clothes smarter, long black hair sweeping elegantly down the side of her face. For once he thought he might make an effort to speak with her. It would be the polite thing to do, and the Cradocks might have news of Ottery. As for the younger Cradock siblings, two rather annoying spindly boys, Ron suspected that they were considered too young to attend the conclave. Presumably Mrs Cradock had stayed in their room to look after them. Ron had caught a brief glimpse of her in the corridor earlier on: she looked the same as usual, just as thin as the rest of her family, with keen dark eyes and a gentle, but line-worn face.

When Ron's gaze reached the final grouping, gathered on the far right of the assembly, he suddenly found himself looking at a collection of Ministry wizards, most prominent among them Mortimer Knott himself. He was flanked on the sofa by Will Gash, his faithful assistant, and a rather attractive witch from Hermione's department called Julia Massey. Standing behind the sofa were two wizards from international relations that Ron knew as Carmody and Hinks, plus a wiry youth with red-blonde hair Ron had never seen before. At the very end of the group, looking somewhat meek and forlorn, stood Argenta Coyle.

'You?' said Ron, staring at Argenta as he went to take up one of the last remaining seats at the gathering. 'I always thought you had some sympathies for this lot,' he remarked, gesturing in Belhaine's direction.

'Oh, no more than Hermione,' replied Argenta, smirking at Ron from her seat. Ron groped around for an answer but couldn't think of one.

'Mortimer! Good grief!' interjected Mr Weasley, who had evidently just finished his own scan of the assembly.

'Arthur, sit down please,' said Mortimer Knott in a more placatory tone than he had been heard to use before. He too seemed tired and older.

'I was out of the Ministry at the time of the … of the dreadful event,' he said by way of explanation to the Weasleys, with a sidelong glance towards the Belhaine faction as his voice trailed off.

'Ladies and gentlemen,' interrupted Edmund Tournier, who had once again risen from his seat and swept to the centre of the floor. 'I know very well that only one thing unites those of us here present: the fact that we are wizards. Since you have all been sufficiently open-minded to consent to this gathering, I trust that you will all set aside your … political persuasions … in the interests of deciding what we as wizards can do to protect ourselves and help those who are still being held at the Witchfinder's pleasure.'

A murmur of voices rippled through the company.

'He acts like he sent out invitations to us all,' muttered Ron to his father.

'I would like to start the proceedings with two announcements,' said Edmund Tournier. 'Firstly, we have been unable to renew contacts with the Minister of Magic. Mortimer Knott was briefly able to make contact with Myra Tremayne, who is travelling with the Minister and a small group of high-ranking former Ministry officials...'

More murmuring broke out at the mention of Kingsley Shacklebolt. _Even now he can't get shot of her_, Ron reflected. _Apart from her, I wonder who else is with him?_

'They are moving across country and were not able to attend this meeting. Mortimer hopes to have more news from them soon.'

_How come he's the one in contact with Kingsley?_

'My second announcement,' Edmund Tournier continued, 'is that contact has been re-established with Gringotts.'

The announcement was greeted with an even louder rumble of comment.

'What do you mean?' said Percy. 'Diagon Alley is under the control of the Safe Magic Campaign.'

'Diagon Alley is, but Gringotts isn't,' replied Tournier. 'The goblins' magic remains impregnable, to muggles and wizards alike, but effectively imprisons the goblins inside the bank. They have enough resources to survive for a long time, and can continue to do magic undetected, but otherwise they are cut off from the outside world. Our money is in Gringotts of course, but we had no means of accessing it, and the goblins had no means of doing business with the wizarding world. Until now. What we have discovered, thanks to our colleague here from the Department of Magical Creatures,' here he gestured with a smile to Julia Massey, 'is that a number of years back the Department put in place a protocol for communication with the goblins. A kind of joint committee, so to speak. It was set up for goblins to consult with the Ministry on policy that affected wizard finance, where goblins hold the monopoly.'

The reference to a goblin committee suddenly registered with Ron: it had been one of Hermione's projects in the first years after the fall of Voldemort. The subject seemed so dry and bureaucratic that he had long forgotten it, but now he recalled how she had been at great pains to win back the trust of the goblins.

'_It has to be me_,' she had told him. '_They know it was me who worked out how to break out of Gringotts and they hate me for it. I have to make amends, if I can_.'

He remembered how she had asked him to come with her to meet with the goblins. '_You were part of what we did that day in Gringotts_.' But he had refused. The idea of begging goblins for forgiveness had struck him as dangerous, not to mention doomed to failure.

'The committee built bridges with the goblins, rebuilt relations that had been strained during the battle with Voldemort …' Tournier's introductory speech was continuing.

He remembered that Harry had gone with Hermione to meet the goblins. In fact the two of them had gone repeatedly to Gringotts. When he asked Hermione what happened at the meetings, she had gone pale and said that the negotiations were top secret. When he had asked Harry, he too had shivered and said that the goblins had put an enchantment on them, preventing them from talking about the meetings. Now, when Ron remembered, he found it pleasant to think of Hermione being focused on something other than witchfinders and Lillian Herrick.

'So through this old protocol contact has been resumed, and the goblins of Gringotts are willing to give us access to our accounts. They are bound by the obligation to do so.'

The chatter in the room was louder. A lot of people were very interested in getting hold of whatever money and chattels they still had in the bank.

'When and how can we access our accounts?' asked Draco Malfoy, rising to his feet for the first time and speaking in a clear, assured voice, almost like the Malfoy of old addressing his fellow Slytherins. Ron still thought he looked ridiculous with dyed black hair.

Edmund Tournier smiled again at Julia Massey.

'Julia, would you mind …?' he said, retaking his seat.

Julia Massey took the floor. She was tall and willowy, with long fair hair and a thin, sallow face.

'Umm … I'll be very brief,' she began, in a slightly hesitant voice. 'We were able to contact Gringotts using a goblin-made magical device given to us to arrange meetings of the Ministry-Goblin Joint Committee. Because it was goblin-made, it went undetected by the Array. Each member of the committee had a copy of the device. I was the only member of the committee to be outside the Ministry when it was captured, apart from Hermione Granger.'

The mention of Hermione drew a ripple of interest from the gathering.

'Anyway, we contacted the goblins, and made plans for us to be smuggled into Gringotts. Being a committee member, I was the only one they allowed inside, but getting there is obviously quite dangerous at the moment as Diagon Alley is under constant surveillance by safe wizards. Tobias Destrument was kind enough to escort me to the door and get me out safely afterwards.'

Here she smiled in the general direction of the Belhaine faction.

'Anyway, withdrawals can be arranged by appointment. You have to go to Gringotts in person, only they won't allow you inside. Instead they keep you in a kind of antechamber and you have to wait there until they come and deal with you. The good part is that this antechamber is rather more secret than the main entrance to Gringotts, which is still in full sight on Diagon Alley. Fortunately the safe wizards have made no progress in breaking through the goblins' enchantments.'

The noise level was rising in the room.

'And if anyone is considering a trip to Diagon Alley to make a withdrawal,' said Tobias Destrument, speaking loudly over the din, 'I'll be happy to suggest how best to get in and out, and what are the safer and less safer parts of the area.'

'I recommend him as a guide,' Julia added, a winsome smile on her lips.

'Anyway, if you want to make an appointment, I can give you the full details.'

At that she returned to her place behind the Ministry sofa.

In his apparent capacity as chairman of the meeting, Edmund Tournier was back on his feet and calling the room to order.

'As you can see,' he was saying in a loud voice, 'this is a good example of cooperation between the Ministry and those formerly opposed to it.'

'That's all very well, but I want to know what it is _they really want_,' said the wizard called Carmody, pointing in the direction of Belhaine's group.

The company looked towards Belhaine, who smiled and coughed.

'I am a divisive person,' he said in a soft, gravelly voice. 'And, what's more, an old man. So I will leave the floor to the younger generation. Tobias.' He gestured to his grandson who, with a curt nod to his grandfather, rose to his feet.

'First things first,' said Tobias Destrument, addressing the gathering in clear, unaccented English. 'There are far too few of us to make any kind of serious attempt at freeing the Ministry. Since we choose not to go into exile, even those of us who have family abroad, we have to go underground. But even underground, any attempts at serious magic will be detected and we will be exposed. So we need to find a suitable base, organise ourselves and gather as many free wizards to us. We will need to do this as discreetly as possible. The more intelligence and wizarding expertise we gather, the better our chances of finding a way to destroy or get our hands on the so-called Array device being used to track magic. That is our plan,' he said, gesturing to those sitting around him. 'Anyone who so wishes is welcome to join us.'

Dark looks greeted this last remark. The looks were not lost on Destrument.

'Don't think that we're trying to drum up support for the Citadel. The movement is no more. We were set up to warn wizards about the threat facing us. What was once just a threat is now our daily reality, so our organisation no longer has any relevance. We need a new organisation, one that is as inclusive as possible, to deal with the new, and dire circumstances facing all wizards.'

Tobias Destrument promptly sat down. His sister, Enid Blackledge, who had been following his speech with enraptured attention, whispered in his ear and lay her head on his shoulder. Discussion of the speech rumbled around the company.

The Ministry wizard Hinks stood up.

'Is what he said your position?' he said, pointing at Belhaine.

'Tobias speaks for me,' replied Belhaine. 'I am in semi-retirement, only I have to enjoy it on the run, like the rest of you.'

This was greeted with another murmur of discussion.

'Your analysis of the situation is pretty sound,' said Mortimer Knott in his usual booming voice. 'But there can be no question of attacking ordinary muggles. Our fight is with the witchfinders and the traitors called 'safe wizards'.'

'We're not Death Eaters, you know,' replied Destrument quietly. 'We never were.' Draco and Narcissa Malfoy seemed to be gazing at a distant point, far beyond the room.

'You say we need to organise ourselves,' said Argenta Coyle. From her position at the very end of the company, she seemed smaller than usual. 'But what do you propose? That we all live together in some kind of camp in the forest?'

'That's one way of putting it,' Destrument replied thoughtfully, seemingly noticing Argenta's presence for the first time. 'Although I think we can do a bit better than roughing it in the woods. There are safe houses here and there, for the most part far from areas known to be inhabited by wizards. We know of a place, and I know that our host is willing to make a house available.'

'Well, it's probably better than staying in a tent,' said Argenta.

It seemed to Ron that at this point Argenta shot him a sly wink.

'Where are these safe houses?' said Mortimer Knott.

'Dotted around the country,' replied Destrument.

'I take it that this house isn't one of them?' said Knott.

'That would not be practical,' Edmund Tournier intervened. 'So far movements at Lightfoot House have gone undetected, but if we were to let the house and estate be used for clandestine operations, I'm afraid it's the sort of thing that can only be concealed _with magic_, which is precisely what we can't do. Lightfoot House has continued to flourish in part thanks to our ability to operate without magic where necessary.'

'So how long until we have to leave?' asked Will Gash.

'It's not a matter of urgency,' replied Edmund Tournier.

'But sooner rather than later,' added Mrs Tournier in a serene voice, without rising to her feet.

'So we would have to rely on the Belhaines and their safe houses,' remarked Percy Weasley.

'Like I keep telling you, you have nothing to fear from us. We have no hidden agenda,' replied Destrument. 'We're all in this together. We have nothing to gain from deceiving you, or betraying you, if that's what worries you.'

'You'll have to excuse us, Mr Destrument,' said Mr Weasley, stepping in. 'But our acquaintance is rather short. We're used to the Ministry of Magic and your organisation being on opposite sides. Cooperating and cohabiting will take a bit of getting used to.'

Tobias Destrument listened in silence, and nodded as Mr Weasley finished speaking.

'In any case,' he said finally, 'anyone who wishes to come with us to our safe houses is free to do so.'

'Excuse me,' said another voice. It was the tall red-haired youth standing behind Mortimer Knott, now speaking for the first time.

'If it's safe houses you're after, there's something you should know: there's at least one place in Britain where you can still do magic pretty much undetected.'

Everyone's eyes were suddenly on the speaker.

Among the renewed whispering someone was heard to exclaim loudly: 'Who is that anyway?'

The red-haired youth looked out at the gathering with a rather grim expression, as if he was already regretting disclosing the information.

'My name is Daniel McAuliffe,' he replied. The name did not seem to register with anyone.

'If you're wondering how come I'm here, I can tell you. A couple of weeks back I was about to be taken by witch-hunters when the Tourniers rescued me.'

'Where is this place you speak of?' asked Mortimer Knott, his voice now more authoritative than that last time he spoke.

'It's the place I come from,' said Daniel McAuliffe. 'The Rhinns of Galloway.'

'Where's that?' came a voice from the gathering.

'It's a kind of peninsula in the West of Scotland. Shaped sort of like a hammer,' said Will Gash in reply.

'That's right, more or less,' said McAuliffe. 'Anyway, this Array, as I understand it's called, doesn't work on any more than a small part of it.'

'How can that be true?' said Destrument. 'One of the first things we looked into was whether the Array worked on the Scottish islands. It does: apparently they boost the signal there on purpose.'

'On the islands yes,' said McAuliffe. 'And on a normal peninsula it works like everywhere else. But round our way, the magical detection just sort of peters out a little way west of Stranraer.'

'So there's a magical community there that is still able to do magic unmolested?' said Carmody.

'There's just one magical family on the Rhinns,' replied McAuliffe. 'Our family.'

'And you continue to do magic without any problems from witch-hunters?'

'Witch-hunters have visited the Rhinns all right,' said McAuliffe, 'but my family is very low profile. We do very little magic. My father has always believed in using magic only when absolutely essential. One of my brothers cast a spell by accident, and the witch-hunters in Stranraer never even noticed.'

'This is interesting, very interesting,' said Destrument. 'But if we all were to turn up in this place and start doing magic, the Safe Magic Campaign would very soon come to hear about us.'

'I wouldn't recommend doing that,' said McAuliffe. 'And anyway, I can't issue a general invitation: my father would probably throw me out on the spot. But I thought you should know. It might be of use to you.'

With that, Daniel McAuliffe stepped back into the shadows.

'Thank you, Daniel,' said Edmund Tournier, once again stepping in as adjudicator. 'I suggest we work on a way to include the Rhinns of Galloway in our network. In the meantime, the other safe houses mentioned by Tobias should be our first port of call.'

'What does he mean, '_our_ first port of call'?' muttered Ron to Ginny and George. 'He's not going anywhere.'

'They can say what they want,' replied Ginny in a whisper, 'There's nothing that's going to make me want to go and stay with the Belhaines.'

'There's one reason why this information is of particular interest to us,' said Destrument, standing up again. 'The Rhinns of Galloway are in Scotland. That makes it a useful staging place for our other main objective, other than entering the Ministry.'

'What other objective?' said Hinks.

'Entering Hogwarts,' came the reply.


	58. The penitence of Lillian Herrick - Ch 11

11\. An isolated incident, barely newsworthy

'_Not sure your name is safe anymore_.'

That was all the message from Caius had said. Although it only really confirmed what she already knew, she took it as the final sign that it was time to leave. She had managed to get the time off work, although it was unlikely she would be returning. She had to find a way not to drop Eve in it over the rent too.

With money an issue, she had toured the town's charity shops to assemble a new wardrobe. She had also bought a pair of glasses with no corrective lenses, several boxes of hair dye (she was planning to go much closer to blonde this time) and had devised a different make-up scheme. She had an appointment booked at the hairdressers at nine the next morning to shorten the hair that Natalie Grey wore halfway down her back. This time she was aiming for a sensible, office worker kind of look, one that would help her blend into the mass of London commuters.

She had finished her last shift at the supermarket and was already nearly at the traffic lights where she normally crossed the ring road to head into her neighbourhood. Or anyway it would still be her neighbourhood for one more night and some of the following day. On the corner of the street across from the traffic lights, overlooking the ring road, was the Windmill pub. Hearing raised voices she looked over and saw that some sort of disturbance had broken out in front of it. A man lay on the ground, surrounded by aggressive-looking men in tracksuits. Such scenes were not uncommon in Unham. But as she came nearer, she could make out that the man slowly picking himself up from the floor, blood flowing from a wound on the side of his face, was Mike-os. Standing above him, in sharp contrast to the rest of the crowd, was an elegant woman in a long black coat. She gave the order for the men surrounding Mike-os to cease the beating, ordering them instead to get him up and put him into the back of a nearby parked car. Once Mike-os had been bundled into the back of the car, the woman strode purposely to the car and got into the front passenger seat. Natalie Grey knew who the woman was. Her name was Chloe Goodwin; she had once kidnapped Hermione Granger and Caius Hanmer from the South Bank and taken them before Mr Morley. She had been at Hogwarts after all, Hermione had discovered when she had done some checking-up on her, a member of Slytherin house and in the same year as Bill Weasley, only she had been called Chloe Beaumont then.

As the car pulled away Natalie was already three quarters of the way down the street. The thugs made no attempt to stop her, their response being limited to a couple of wolf whistles as she walked briskly past them. She turned the street only to see the car turning right at the next set of traffic lights, about fifty metres down. _I think I know where they're heading_. She quickened her pace as much as possible without actually running. As she turned off the ring road she could already see the petrol station where Eve worked up ahead. The same car parked on the forecourt of the petrol station, its motor still running. After a couple of minutes, Chloe Goodwin and another person, presumably another wizard, emerged from the petrol station and returned to the car. Eve's shift wasn't due to start until late afternoon, which meant that either they would come back for her later or, if they had her home address, they would be heading straight to the flat.

She looked back down the street. It was empty. If she tried to go home on foot she would either be far too late or completely out of breath. There was only one way to gain some time, and since the net was clearly closing in around her, there was no real reason not to use it. She stood very still and pressed her back to the concrete wall behind her. _Do I still know how to do it properly? Will it go wrong?_ With one last glance up and down the street, she closed her eyes and forced herself to disapparate.

The sense of disorientation was much stronger than usual and as she landed on the pavement she fell to her knees, her head spinning. _All of me made it though_. Throwing off the dizziness, she struggled to her feet, quickly looking around her to see whether they were onto her already. But the street was empty, at least for the time being. She had come to the place she intended, a street parallel to the one on which she and Eve lived. She walked quickly down the street, which was lined with redbrick terraced houses virtually identical to those on her own street, and turned the corner. _Still no one._ She wrenched her mobile phone out of her pocket and quickly went to Eve's number. She was dialling the number as she turned onto the muddy alleyway that ran between the backs of the houses, separating her street from the street behind it. There was no one on the alleyway, and Eve wasn't answering her phone either.

She started to walk down the alleyway. _If anyone is waiting for me down here, I know how to defend myself._ Soon she was standing just behind the back wall of her building, looking up at her bedroom window. The curtains were open. She tried Eve's number again. Then she reached down into the dirt, picked up a small stone and threw it at the window. She waited for at least a minute, looking up at the window, but nothing happened. Suddenly an unseen figure closed the curtains.

She continued to look up at the now closed curtains, as if any moment Eve would open them and calmly ask her what she was doing down in the alley. Then suddenly someone yelled in pain. The yelling went on for a couple of seconds before cutting off abruptly. It was a man's voice, quite possibly Mike-os. She took one last look at the house, with its mute brick walls and closed windows. _I wish you were here_. Then she disapparated inside the house.

The room she had apparated into was strangely empty and unfamiliar. As she looked around the cluttered, dusty living room, she realised that she had slightly missed her target and was in fact in Mike-os's living room, downstairs from her own flat. Raised voices could be heard from upstairs, and now there was another loud howl of pain. _It is Mike-os. They're torturing him_. She walked straight out of Mike-os's flat, crossed the narrow entrance hall and went up the stairs to her own flat. The front door was ajar. _This is the end._

'You think witches are cool, do you?' came the voice of Chloe Goodwin from inside. 'I bet you loved helping one to hide from the authorities …'

'Witches _are_ cool,' said Mike-os in reply. 'But we never knew she was one.' His voice was ragged and stripped of its usual bravado, but there was still defiance in it.

'How convenient,' replied Chloe blithely. Then Mike-os yelled out again in pain.

'I'll show you how cool magic is,' Chloe continued. 'Since you're such a fan, I can give you a demonstration of what magic can do. Magic can be used to deceive, to injure and to kill.'

'Is that what you learned at Hogwarts?'

Chloe wheeled around, then smiled as Hermione Granger walked calmly into the living room. In an instant she had three wands pointed at her face: one was Chloe's, the others held by two wizards who looked vaguely familiar, either from the corridors of Hogwarts or from the Ministry. Eve and Mike-os were standing stiffly in the middle of the room with their hands behind the back, clearly immobilised by an enchantment. There was a puddle of blood at Mike-os's feet, and slash marks on his chest and abdomen. _Sectum Sempra. Charming_. Despite the enchantment holding them fixed in place, Eve seemed to be shaking, her eyes wide with fear.

'Leave them alone,' said Hermione in a quiet, composed tone. 'They never knew.'

'You would say that, wouldn't you?' replied Chloe. 'But now you're here, it doesn't matter.'

'Leave them alone,' Hermione repeated.

'No wand?' said Chloe, looking her up and down.

'I can manage fine without it,' said Hermione, fixing the witch with her gaze.

'Particularly dangerous, this one,' said Chloe, the remark directed towards Mike-os and Eve. 'If you had found out her secret, goodness only knows what she would have done to you.'

'These are my friends,' replied Hermione, searching out Eve's gaze with her own. For a few instants, Eve couldn't return it, but when she did, the look was clear-eyed and still friendly.

Chloe had been observing the exchange. She turned to Mike-os and Eve.

'I suppose I'm going to have to perform the introductions,' she said ironically. 'You're in quite a lot of trouble: you've been sheltering one of the most notorious witches in Britain. Although no doubt she's very persuasive, Mr Morley is going to take a pretty dim view of anyone who helps Hermione Granger.'

The name echoed around the room. Eve's face remained blank with fear, but recognition seemed to register in Mike-os's.

'You're Hermione Granger?' he asked, apparently incredulous.

There was no point in denying it. And she didn't want to either.

'Yes, I'm Hermione Granger,' she replied, speaking in her crispest tone. _Like I'm answering in class at Hogwarts, or giving a presentation at the Ministry. Or coming up with a plan to get me, Harry and Ron out of trouble_.

'I've heard of you,' he replied. 'You really are notorious.'

'Thanks, Mike-os,' she replied, unable to suppress the ghost of a smile.

'As Mr Morley said,' said Chloe Goodwin, interrupting, '_If there's one witch I absolutely have to get my hands on_, _it's Hermione Granger_. And here she is …'

'He likes getting his hands on witches, does he, Mr Morley?' said Eve, speaking up for the first time.

She was rewarded with a vicious swipe across her cheek from one of the other safe wizards. Blood started to trickle from a red gash.

'Touch her again and you'll be sorry,' said Hermione quietly, fixing the wizard with her gaze.

'You're in enough trouble as it is,' said Chloe Goodwin. 'If I were you, I wouldn't add assaulting a safe wizard to the list of charges against you.'

'Oh I'm sure the list is long enough,' Hermione replied. 'And I'm quite sure I've got nothing to lose. So I don't really care what I do to this idiot.' She continued to stare at the wizard who had cursed Eve. He soon lowered his wand.

'Just out of curiosity, how did you find me?' she continued. _The less attention paid to Eve and Mike-os, the better_.

'You thought your little disguise was really good, I suppose?' said Chloe sarcastically. She walked up to Hermione and looked her up and down with a scornful expression. 'Slumming it.' She glanced back at Eve and Mike-os. 'She was trying to fit in with you, of course. This is her impression of what she thinks you are: a couple of chavs in a town full of mediocrities. I'd feel a bit insulted if I were you.'

Eve and Mike-os made no reply. Instead they continued to stare mutely at the safe wizards and the girl formerly known as Natalie Grey.

'Tell me how you found me.' Hermione's tone was calm but commanding. Chloe Goodwin looked back at her.

'You miscalculated, Hermione,' she replied. 'You thought a place like this was beneath our notice. You thought it was enough just to not do magic and dress up like a tart. You were wrong. You were recognised.'

'By whom?' said Hermione. Her first thought was for Lillian Herrick, but for the time being she couldn't think of a motive.

'That doesn't matter,' replied Chloe. 'The intelligence was accurate, so here we all are, having fun together. But it's going to get even better in a little while. It's going to get almost festive, I would say.'

Hermione understood her meaning. Before being taken away to be dealt with at some secluded location, the people of Unham would be treated to the sight of a witch on parade. She had once seen a bit on television: she had watched for just long enough to see a terrified young woman tied up on the back of a trailer, while a crowd of onlookers jeered at her. After that she couldn't bear to watch any more.

Suddenly the flat began filling with people, most of them seemingly from among the burly men who had been involved in assaulting Mike-os outside the Windmill. Before she had a chance to say anything more, two of them bundled Hermione roughly down the stairs. The two safe wizards followed, their wands trained on her. The image of Eve and Mike-os, still bound and silent in the living room of the flat, floated before her eyes as she was pushed out of the flat into the now darkened street.

Curtains moved in windows on the other side of the street. A car was waiting in front of the house, with what looked like a carnival float attached to the back of it. A metal bar had been mounted on the trailer, and Hermione surmised that she would soon be chained to it. _Can I use the Circle to escape?_ She shuddered to think what might happen to Eve and Mike-os if she did escape. They wouldn't last long enough for her to come and help them. And there were too many wizards about for her to imagine that she could ghost them away undetected. She reflected that she would have to bide her time, let the worst come.

As expected, she was dragged up onto the trailer and handcuffed to the metal bar. A safe wizard jumped up beside her on the trailer and cast an enchantment that bound her to the spot. The steel handcuffs were cool around her wrists, but the enchantment was hot and stinging. The wizard looked up the house and fired an enchantment straight at it: a few moments later a large red message was emblazoned on the front of the house, as if someone had daubed it with red paint. The message was both in runes and in English. It simply read: _Witch house_.

'Down with witchcraft!' shouted the safe wizard standing next to Hermione.

'Down with witchcraft!' responded the witch-hunters filling up the pavement, the road and the front garden, jeering at Hermione. As she looked on, Chloe Goodwin appeared at the threshold of the house, Mike-Os and Eve standing mutely beside her.

'And now for the finishing touch,' she said nonchalantly, flourishing her wand in the cool evening air. Hermione suddenly found herself wearing a long red robe. The robe seemed to glow a violent, garish red colour as she looked down on it. She could also make out the 'witch' rune scrawled in black across her chest. _What a nice touch_. The safe wizard who had cast the rune on the house leapt down from the float and the car pulling it roared to life. Then the procession set off, the witch float clanking down the street, its sole occupant illuminated bright red.

The streets of the neighbourhood where Natalie Grey had lived were empty, but its residents were most likely watching the procession go past from their houses. The procession moved slowly, accompanied by a horde of whooping and jeering witch-hunters on foot, sounding like they were on their way to a football match. As they approached the town centre, Hermione could see more and more onlookers. At first she looked down, trying to avoid their gaze, hoping she wouldn't see anyone she knew among them. But this was clearly pathetic. She would look them all in the eye.

There was less jeering than she had expected, or rather, most of it came from the witch-hunters marching with the cavalcade. Some onlookers looked confused, others seemed intimidated by the marching witch-hunters, while others looked away as Hermione looked down silently from the witch float. A young boy threw an apple at her, which caught her on the arm, momentarily throwing her off balance. The witch-hunters roared their approval, but when Hermione looked again the boy had already disappeared from sight. _It's easier than I expected._ At one point there was even a little dissent: as they rounded a street in the town centre, a small group of two or three people in black capes and witch masks appeared in front of the procession. One was even brandishing a makeshift broom. A few of the witch-hunters laughed at them, but then the figures started throwing makeshift missiles at the cavalcade. Some of them landed on the car pulling the float, while others connected with the witch-hunters themselves, covering them in a thick, red gooey substance as they exploded. The witch-hunters roared again, this time in anger, and some of them set off in pursuit of the dissenters, who promptly disappeared down side streets.

As she looked at the people gathered to watch at the side of the road, Hermione noticed a man with a video camera, apparently filming the event. _Is this going to make the news?_ The arrests of wizards had long since ceased to be considered particularly newsworthy, but then again, maybe she would be regarded a high-profile arrest. _Mike-os had heard of me. Has he heard of Harry, or Ron, or Dumbledore even? _ She couldn't help but wonder how any wizards who knew her would feel if they happened to catch a glimpse of her face on television, filmed for the last time as she was taken away to some unknown fate. _It's too late. No one can help me. They won't be putting me in the Ministry of Magic. I'll be lucky to escape alive_. She felt strangely calm. All of a sudden it was as if there was no sound, and no crowd. As if no one was there but her.

As the procession turned the corner the last thing she saw was a couple of witch-hunters dragging the cameraman to one side and smashing the video camera on the ground. So she wasn't even going to spoil someone's dinner after all.


	59. The penitence of Lillian Herrick - Ch 12

12\. Wands move part 1

Soft but insistent knocking at the door roused Imogen from her sleep. The strangeness of the bed made her sit up abruptly and look around the darkened room to try and remember where she was. The night before had been a strange one. They had left Deptford in a mad hurry, following a dizzying route that seemed to pass through most of south London. '_How am I going to get home from here_?' she had commented as Tulse Hill station flashed past the window. '_I don't think you'll be able to go home tonight_,' Caius had replied from the front seat. '_Well, I think I'd better let my flatmate know where I am_,' she had exclaimed in a voice she hoped didn't sound petulant. She wasn't altogether sure she knew where she was, let alone where she was going. She'd never been that far south of the river. '_Here is as good a place as any to send a text_,' Caius replied. '_If your message gets traced, we're nowhere near we're making for_.' '_Where are we going anyway?_' '_My grandmother's house._'

The text message she sent to Lorna read: '_Probably won't be back tonight, but I'm fine. Will be spending the night somewhere in south London_.' Figuring that Lorna was probably in a bar or restaurant with people from her office, Imogen didn't really expect a reply. But 30 seconds later the reply arrived. It read: '_You go girl_ ' She had been about to reply _For goodness sake_ before thinking better of it.

Caius's grandmother's house turned out to be a 1930s semi somewhere way out on the fringe of London, zone 4 or 5 at least. When they got inside the house there was no sign of any grandmother, although she could reasonably be expected to be asleep in bed by that time. Instead she found herself being introduced to 'the coven', as they called themselves. _I can't believe I'm hanging out with a coven_, Imogen had thought to herself as she looked at their faces around the kitchen table as they went over the evening's events. They looked terribly young, but at the same time very organised and serious. Almost worryingly so.

The knocking paused for a few moments before resuming.

'Yes?' she called out this time.

'Sorry to disturb you,' came the voice through the door, but Caius says there's something urgent he needs to discuss with you.

'Err... ok. Do I have time to take a shower first?'

'Umm, probably.'

She reached out of the bed for her bag and extracted her phone from it. The hour was later than she had imagined; there was basically no chance of her getting to work on time from goodness knows where in South London.

There were two unread text messages on her phone, both from Mr Laceby, who had evidently made it out of Deptford. The first message read:

_Don't worry about rushing into the office. I'll sort everything out with Mr Rance. You're better off where you are for the time being_.

The second read:

_Mr Rance reassured you're on an important fact-finding mission. No need to come to work for the next few days. Mr Marchelow's attempt to have you suspended failed. He seems pleased that your efforts to meet with free wizards went awry though._

A wave of anxiety rushed through her as she read the word 'suspended', even if the attempt to suspend her had failed. Quite how she was going to work with Mr Marchelow from now was unclear. She hoped Sioned was alright.

* * *

She arrived in the house's 1970s kitchen in what seemed like an incredibly short space of time, having flown through the bathroom and hastily dressed in the clothes she had been wearing the night before.

Caius Hanmer was waiting for her, bleary eyed and dishevelled, and with a worried look on his face.

'Sorry to make you get up like this,' he said.

'That's ok, I'm up this time every day to go to work.'

'Only you won't be going to work today, so I understand from Mr Laceby.'

'That's right… so he spoke to you too?'

Caius nodded grimly.

'Yes, he spoke to us alright.'

'So he got away last night ok?'

'Oh yes, he's good at that sort of thing.'

'He's told my boss that I'm on a fact-finding mission.'

'That's a pretty accurate description, don't you reckon?'

'I suppose so. Anyway, I'm not expected in the office today. Which is lucky, as I don't know how I'd get there from here.'

'Yeah, it's probably better you stay with us for the time being.'

'That's what Mr Laceby said too.'

'I know, but is it really necessary?'

'I reckon so. Now you've been seen with us.'

'Mr Laceby is sorting it out.'

'He may have sorted it out with your boss,' replied Caius, 'but Mr Marchelow's going to be more of a challenge, even for someone of Mr Laceby's abilities. And then there's Mr Morley to deal with. You've just dropped quite a bit further down his list of favourite people. Some of them may be wanting a word with you.'

Imogen snorted and folded her arms.

'I doubt they'll push me into the back of a van round the back of the Agency.'

Even as she spoke the words, she realised they were hollow bravado.

Caius Hanmer scratched his stubbly chin nervously.

'They're more dangerous than you think,' he replied. 'Since you're well briefed, you'll probably know the name Hermione Granger.'

She nodded. The name was near the top of two lists she had seen: the list of the most famous living wizards and the witch-hunters' list of uncaptured wizards. There was a bleak sort of look on Caius's face.

'Mr Laceby contacted us this morning to tell us she's been captured by safe wizards.'

Imogen felt a chill run through her. Her comment about being pushed into the back of a van suddenly sounded even emptier.

'That would be a high profile victory for the Safe Magic Campaign,' she replied.

Caius grimaced.

'I'd say that there's no one Mr Morley would rather catch than Hermione. This is very bad news.'

'Where did they catch her?'

'In a place called Unham. She's been living there incognito. Anyway, we're leaving straight away. Goodness knows what we'll find there.'

Caius quickly summoned the handful of Coven members present, giving orders to leave at once. It was agreed that the shy older girl called Serena would stay behind as evidently she had some task to perform.

'It's strange,' Caius remarked to Imogen as they stood by the front door, on the slightly faded pink carpet. 'Why haven't they announced the fact that they've captured Hermione?'

'Maybe Mr Laceby's information isn't accurate,' offered Imogen. She doubted that was really the case, but she wanted to know more of the link between him and the wizards.

'That's not likely,' was the response.

He opened the front door. A slightly battered white minivan was parked outside.

'When are you going to tell me how you know him?' Imogen repeated.

'Now's not the best time.'

'Ok, but I need to be kept informed of what's going on.'

'You are being kept informed.'

'So I take it I'm coming too?' she asked, as they stood in front of the van.

He smiled ruefully.

'Are you sure you want to?'

'I'm supposed to be on an important fact-finding mission, according to Mr Laceby.'

'This will be a bit more than a fact-finding mission,' he replied, sliding the van door open.

'Still, I need to understand what's really going on,' said Imogen. 'Particularly given this alleged plan to release the wizards then hunt them down.'

Caius looked around nervously.

'You'd best keep quiet about that.'

He turned back towards the van, seemingly scrutinising its interior.

'It could be dangerous where we're going,' he said, glancing round at Imogen again. 'Or violent.'

'I'll be ok,' she replied. At that moment the strap of her bag started to slide down her shoulder. Hastily she pulled it back into place.

'The safe wizards might see you with us,' he continued.

'I'll take that risk.'

'Are you really willing to risk your career?'

_Do I still have one? _Whether she did or not, her curiosity was getting the better of her.

'Yes, I suppose I am.'

He smiled then gestured for her to get inside. She slid into the back seat of the car, where she found herself sitting next to Leah Petrini. The girl shot her a glazed sort of half-smile. The blonde wizard who had shown her the newspaper article was in the driver's seat. With Caius, the driver, Leah Petrini and another coven member, they were five.

'We'll meet the others on the way,' said the coven wizard to Imogen when he saw her glancing around the inside of the van.

Caius Hanmer walked round the front of the van and climbed into the front seat. He shook his head and pulled on a seatbelt.

'God I miss apparating,' he said loudly.

* * *

They drove flat out for several hours, stopping at a motorway service station when it was too uncomfortable to drive any further. '_It's taking so long_,' Caius kept saying at intervals, each time his tone more agitated. They had just passed High Wycombe when a conversation started up about whether they should risk trying to use magic to get to Unham faster. _Exactly how quickly would they detect us, if we were to apparate?_ Caius had asked Leah. _Very quickly_, had been the reply. _But would we at least have time to get stuck into the witch-hunters before they were warned of us?_ _Almost certainly not._

It seemed to Imogen that they had covered a lot of ground, but she didn't have a very clear idea of where their destination was on the map. The five of them sat around a plastic table in the service station, sipping drinks from cardboard cups and devouring chocolate biscuits from a little pile in front of them. The weather was overcast and no one was in very good spirits. After they had eaten, they walked for a few minutes around the car park to fend off cramp. The experience was vaguely reminiscent of a school coach trip. Imogen was just passing the children's play area when Caius crossed her path, changed direction and joined her.

'Ready to go?' he asked, something between a grin and a grimace on his face.

'Whenever you are.'

'We're just waiting for the others to join us. They should be here in a few minutes.'

'I suppose you need reinforcements.'

'Something like that'.

He paused and looked at her, seemingly sizing up her face.

'I realised something,' he added. 'About the risk of you being seen with us.'

'Go on …'

'If it comes to a fight with safe wizards, everyone will be doing magic. So no one will notice if I cast a quick spell to change your appearance.'

'What?' she asked, struggling to conceal the tone of alarm in her voice. 'What do you plan to do to me?'

'Nothing bad,' he replied, smiling slightly. 'You'll still look just as nice.'

They stopped walking as an articulated lorry pulled out of a parking space and rolled slowly past. _He thinks I look nice?_

'You think it'll come to a fight then?' she asked, quickly changing the subject.

'It's very likely.'

'This Hermione is that important?'

'She is. But I'm not that optimistic we'll find her. So much time has passed already. It was a while before even Mr Laceby found out.'

They paused in front of a rather forlorn children's slide. She turned to face him, trying to catch his gaze.

'So who is Mr Laceby, really?'

He paused, as if unsure whether or not to answer.

'What do you mean?'

'Is he a wizard?'

He reflected for a moment. Having apparently made up his mind, he began to speak.

'He obviously intends for you to know who he is. Otherwise he wouldn't have got you this much involved.'

Imogen smiled slightly.

'I have the impression that when it comes to Mr Laceby, nothing's unforeseen.'

Caius chuckled under his breath. They walked on.

'That's probably about right. Ever heard of the Tournier family?'

She shook her head.

'No.'

'I'm not surprised,' said Caius. 'They're probably not on any list of known wizards that you might have seen. Anyway, Laceby is not his real name. His real name is Fulke Tournier.'

The name sounded strange and exotic to her. The name of a wizard, undoubtedly. In marked contrast to John Laceby.

'So he is a wizard?' exclaimed Imogen.

'Not exactly,' said Caius. 'The Tournier family is a wizarding family, but Fulke has virtually no magical powers.'

'Virtually no magical powers?'

'He can't do magic like most wizards can. But he obviously has some sort of power. Something that's untraceable. He can manipulate people and situations in subtle ways. He gets things done, and no one can ever quite work out how.'

Imogen smiled.

'That sounds like Mr Laceby.'

Only that wasn't his name.

As they turned back towards the glass-walled motorway services building, a car pulled up in front of them. The passenger door opened and a young woman leaned out. It was the blonde girl from the previous night, whose name was Meredith.

'Good afternoon you two,' she called out in a pleasant voice.

'Hello Meredith,' Caius replied. '_Ti_'_n iawn_?'

'_Da iawn, diolch, a tithau_?'

'Oh, you know, _dal i fynd_.'We're parked round the other side of the building,' he replied, gesturing in the general direction he intended. Meredith nodded and closed the car door. The car promptly pulled away.

'What was that?' Imogen asked.

'Reinforcements,' said Caius, a look of satisfaction on his face.

'I meant the language.'

He smiled.

'Oh, just a bit of Welsh.'

* * *

A minivan and a slightly battered hatchback left the service station in convoy and drove away, sticking just below the speed limit. It was dusk when the outskirts of the town of Unham came into view.

'What are we looking for?' asked Imogen, as they drove around the suburbs of the town, seemingly without any destination.

'Their base,' replied Caius, as they swung off a suburban street and past the still full car park of a supermarket. 'They'll have some low-key place around here somewhere. They don't like to advertise the places where they take witches.'

'I suppose they don't take them back to the Ministry of Magic, or we'd know about it,' remarked Imogen.

'If they've got Hermione they won't bother with that,' replied Caius ominously. 'That's the problem.'

They passed a series of industrial buildings.

'That looks interesting,' said Caius suddenly. The minivan didn't slow down, but about a hundred metres down the road they pulled into a turning. The car following them did the same.

'What was it?' said Imogen.

'There was someone hanging around in the car park of that building back there,' said Caius, pointing his thumb back down the dimly-lit road. 'There could be some perfectly innocent reason for it, or it could be just what we're looking for.'

'What are going to do now?' said Imogen.

'We're going to take a look at that building back down the road.'

Five wizards emerged from the hatchback that had followed them from the meeting point. The eight assembled Coven members gathered together in a kind of huddle on the deserted road. Sioned wasn't among them. She had been told to go to work as usual, but had been warned to disappear at the first sign of any trouble. Imogen hoped she was ok. Leah Petrini had no wand with her, but she could still do magic. What Imogen was going to do wasn't clear to her, but waiting outside in the car was not an option.

'We need to move in very carefully,' said Caius. 'If there are safe wizards holding prisoners, they'll probably disapparate with them very quickly if they get wind of us.'

'Do you think Hermione's in there?' said Meredith.

'I don't know,' said Caius. 'I'm afraid she's too important just to be kept a prisoner all the way out here. Mr Morley will want to deal with her personally. Or maybe your Mr Marchelow will want to see her,' he added, looking at Imogen.

'He's certainly not my Mr Marchelow,' Imogen replied with disgust.

'Anyway,' Caius continued, 'we've still got to do something. And it's time for action. Any kind of action.'

There were a few murmurs of agreement around the group.

'What's the plan then?' said a witch with long, undulating raven-black hair and grey-blue eyes.

'First we need to work out whether this really is the witch-hunters' local centre of operations,' said Caius. 'Who wants to take a quick walk down there to see whether the bloke out the front of that warehouse is a witch-hunter?'

'I can,' said the raven-haired witch.

'Very good,' said Caius and the witch slipped away into the darkness.

'If Rhian confirms that there are witch-hunters down there,' Caius continued, 'we'll need to try and get an idea of how many people are inside.'

'However many there are, the element of surprise is our main advantage,' remarked Meredith.

'That's true,' said Caius. 'And our other advantage is that we'll start using magic before they have a chance to react. Try to stun as many as possible.'

'Only stun?' said another girl with reddish-brown hair and glasses, a hint of laughter in her voice.

'Fraid so,' replied Caius.

'What are we going to do with these two?' said a tall, muscular youth with short brown hair, pointing at Imogen and Leah.

'Good question,' replied Caius. 'Meredith, you keep tabs on Leah. Anything suspicious, and you stun her. Sorry,' he said, turning to the former safe wizard. 'We have to take precautions.'

'I'll behave myself,' replied Leah crossly.

'You stay with me,' said Caius to Imogen. 'Like I said, once the curses start flying, I'll put a charm on you to change your appearance. If things get too dangerous I'll have to disapparate you out to a safe location. You should have got an idea of what the witch-hunters are about by then anyway.'

'Ok,' said Imogen. She wasn't sure what else she could say.

A few moments later a figure appeared out of the darkness: it was the dark-haired witch called Rhian. Her face was pale under the street light.

'They're witch-hunters all right,' she said in a nonchalant voice. 'I even heard them say something about moving the prisoners.'

'Right', said Caius, a cold smile on his face. 'First, we get into position around the building, identify the ways in and out in case they try to seal us inside. Then, when I give the sign, we go straight in, by apparition. Everyone remember how to do that?'

A few sniggers rippled around the group.

'What if they outnumber us?' said one of the wizards.

'I'm guessing they won't,' said Caius. 'If they do, so be it, we'll have to be extra efficient.'

For a moment there was only silence.

'Ok,' he said. 'Time to go'.

Quiet as night, the wizards broke up and made their way down the street in groups of one or two. The sentry in the car park made no sign of having sensed them as they crept into the shadows on its perimeter.

'There's a way-out, if necessary,' whispered Caius to Imogen, pointing to a side door as they crouched behind some bushes. Caius silently took out his wand, touched it and a little pin-prick of light leapt out into the darkness. Several similar lights glowed in answer from the shadows. He grabbed Imogen's hand.

'You won't like this much,' he said.

Then they were gone.


	60. The penitence of Lillian Herrick - Ch 13

13\. Wands move part 2

'What has Hogwarts got to do with Tobias Destrument anyway?' said Ron to the Weasley family in general as they headed back down the corridor to their rooms at Lightfoot House. 'He never even went there. Nor any of the rest of them.'

'That's probably true,' replied Arthur Weasley, glancing back over his shoulder. 'Although we've no way of checking it now. But Hogwarts is the second most prominent magical site in the hands of the Safe Magic Campaign.'

'If it wasn't for the fact that they got everyone out before the witch-hunters arrived, I'd say it would have been more important than the Ministry,' remarked Ginny as she opened the door to Mr and Mrs Weasley's room. 'Still, at least someone is going to start doing something.'

'We can do something ourselves,' said Ron, and Ginny looked archly at him back through the open doorway.

'Something other than trying to liberate Hogwarts?' suggested George.

'Perhaps for the time being it's worth keeping in with this plan to move on Hogwarts, whatever its actual aim is,' said Mr Weasley as he went into the bedroom.

'Point taken,' said Ron, as he went into his respective room.

Three beds had been prepared on the floor of the room: one for George, one for Percy, and one for Ron, or so he supposed. The room was spacious and decorated in a modern style that reminded Ron of a muggle hotel he had once stayed in. For a while, the three brothers sat or lounged on their beds, throwing opinions back and forth about what to make of the Tournier family and the gathering of wizards they had just attended. No one could quite decide whether to come down on the side of suspicion about the Tourniers and their associates or excitement about the prospect of wizards joining forces to take action. After about half an hour, Ron picked himself up off his bed.

'Where are you off to?' Percy asked.

'Just wanted a word with Ginny,' Ron answered, pulling his jumper down as she slipped towards the door.

He quickly found himself in front of a door he was 90% sure was Ginny's.

'Ginny?' he called out.

Girls' voices could be heard behind the door.

'Yes?' came Ginny's muffled voice after a few moments.

'It's me,' said Ron. 'Can I come in?'

There was a brief silence.

'Ok.'

The room Ginny was sharing with Hortensia Cradock was similar to his, the only difference he could make out was that its walls were a kind of pale orange colour. Ginny and Hortensia were sitting on what he presumed were their respective beds: Ginny on a single bed close to the door, Hortensia on a sofa bed next to the window.

'Sorry to disturb you,' he began, directing a meek sort of look in Hortensia's direction, which Ginny noted with withering penetration.

'The conversation was getting a bit dull in the other room,' he began.

'And you were hoping that our conversation might be a bit racier, were you?' asked Ginny, an amused look on her face.

'Not racier. Just different,' Ron replied, looking around for somewhere to sit and finally settling on a large trunk made of a shiny dark wood.

'Hortensia was just telling me about France,' Ginny continued.

'Oh, about Beauxbatons?' asked Ron.

'No, not Beauxbatons. You missed that bit I'm afraid. Hortensia was just telling me what's been happening in France since the Ministry rising.'

'Oh right. When did you get back here, Hortensia?'

Hortensia looked circumspectly at him.

'A couple of months ago, when my contract at Beauxbatons ended.'

'Beauxbatons is still in business, then?'

'Yes, the magic concealing it hasn't been broken. They're trying to find it, but it seems they can't.'

Ron leant forward a little off the trunk where he was perched.

'So wizards in France have it easier than we do here?'

Hortensia brushed her hair out of her eyes.

'There was no great revealing like here. But everyone knows that we exist. Even if we're hidden. The Witchfinders are searching all the time. They're a lot more numerous now. A lot of people have been taken in for questioning. Some of the people they catch are even real wizards.'

'But there's no Array tracking magic,' said Ginny.

'Not on the same scale. But I think they have their ways. The witchfinders, I mean. And there's a lot of self-censorship these days — at least there was more and more by the time I left.'

'Self-censorship?' said Ginny.

'Deliberately doing less magic. Or weaker magic. Trying to go without.'

'Like we do here,' Ron murmured.

He had the impression that she almost smiled at him.

'Yes, like here.'

'So you never thought about bringing your family over there?' Ginny asked.

Hortensia glanced at the door.

'I thought about it,' she said in a lower voice. 'But it would have been hard for my family. They don't speak French or anything …' Her voice trailed off, her hand playing with the purple jewel that hung on a long silver chain around her neck. '… And anyway I wanted to come back …'

She lapsed into silence and lowered her head, her dark hair hanging low over her face. Ron and Ginny waited for her to come back to them.

'And what was it like, coming back into the country?' Ron asked. 'I heard they check people at the ports and the airports. Going out and coming back.'

'The safe wizards, you mean?' said Hortensia, her voice quickly harsher. 'Yes, they were there when I got off the ferry at Newhaven. Like an extra line of border checks.'

'What do they do?' asked Ginny.

'They try to sniff out the wizards. They're looking for some trace of magic on you. You hope whatever magic you last did has worn away and left no trace on you. And in my case I was hoping they didn't have something like a list of staff at Beauxbatons. I guess they don't, because I got past them.'

'Did you see them get anyone?' Ron asked.

She shook her head.

'No, thank goodness.'

'And since you've been back,' Ron began, hesitantly at first, 'have you been back to Ottery?'

Hortensia paused before answering. Her grey eyes seemed to widen.

'Yes,' she said. 'Once. I went back on my own, just to see what it was like.'

'And how was it?' asked Ginny. She was sitting on the edge of her bed, leaning towards where Hortensia was sitting.

'The Muggle part was normal,' Hortensia replied, a coldness drifting into her voice. 'Just the same. The wizard houses were all closed up. Some have been vandalised. Most are abandoned. Or almost.'

'Almost?' said Ginny. 'Are wizards still living there?'

'Not exactly. But Petrus is still there at least.'

'Who's Petrus?' asked Ron.

'Sorry, said Hortensia. 'Petrus is our house elf. He stayed in our house to keep an eye on it. I stayed there overnight. It was weird — he made me supper. And my bed was made up for me in my old room. Outside the house looks boarded up and empty. Inside it's just the same, only we're not there.'

'So is house elf magic? …'

'I think it's sort of imperceptible to the Array. Like goblin magic.'

'Couldn't we use it then to somehow …'

Hortensia shot Ron a slightly ironic smile, the kind of look she had always given him whenever they had met before.

'What, gather up an army of house elves to take back the Ministry?'

'I don't know,' said Ron, feeling slightly sheepish. 'Something like that.'

'I don't think they're political like that,' said Hortensia. 'They care about their families, the problems we have to deal with nowadays, but wizarding society in general isn't really their concern. I don't think they even perceive wizarding society in the way we do. They have their own society. That's what I've learned from being around Petrus, talking to him. He confirmed a lot of what I've learned from Hermione over the years, actually.'

Ginny looked at Ron, who looked at the floor.

'Sorry, I shouldn't have mentioned her,' said Hortensia.

'It's alright,' said Ron, not quite making eye contact. 'It's in the past.'

'I understand,' said Hortensia. 'But do you know where she is?'

Ron looked up, his expression a kind of awkward bewilderment.

'Actually no. I don't. Other than she's on a weird, dark sort of mission.'

'Mission?' asked Hortensia. 'I suppose it's something top secret. They didn't say anything at the meeting.'

'That's because they don't know anything about it,' Ron replied. 'No one does. And it's not top secret. It's just … obscure.'

'So how come your house elf didn't come with you?' Ginny asked suddenly.

'He would have come if we'd have asked him. He was especially worried about Mum and her health. But she insisted she'd be ok. We thought it was more important for him to stay behind and look after the house. It gives us hope that we'll be able to go back there someday.'

'Do you think you will?' asked Ginny.

'I don't know, I just hope. It'd be nice to have my old life back. Maybe you'll go back to the Burrow.'

'Maybe, who knows?' said Ginny. 'Speaking of which … did you see it while you were there?'

'I went and looked at every wizarding house in the village. It looked the same. Just closed up. It hadn't been attacked or anything.'

'At least Hermione's vision didn't come true,' Ron murmured.

'What vision?'

'Oh she once had this vision of witch-hunters marching into Ottery with torches to set the wizard houses alight. She was convinced it was going to happen.'

'Well, it hasn't happened. At least not yet. What is Hermione mixed up with? It sounds pretty dark.'

'Oh it's dark alright,' replied Ron.

They slipped into silence.

'I could ask Petrus to look in on your house if you like,' Hortensia began. 'Make sure everything's running ok.'

'I think Mum sealed it quite tight when she left,' said Ginny.

'I reckon he could find a way in.'

'Ok then,' said Ginny. 'I'll mention it to Mum and Dad. I think they might quite like the idea.'

Ron slipped out into the corridor. The conversation had dwindled, before moving onto subjects that weren't really his cup of tea. Ginny and Hortensia had spent several minutes discussing the jewel Hortensia wore around her neck. Apparently a friend had given it to her. Only Hortensia made some strong hints that she saw him as more than a friend, even if nothing had happened. After a few minutes Ron had made his excuses and left. He was surprised that Ginny found the subject so bearable.

He felt tired, but he still wasn't ready to go to bed. Since he was a guest at Lightfoot House, there was no reason why he shouldn't have a look around. He might even bump into Coralia Tournier.

The corridor was empty and subtly lit. He set off slowly at first, his pace quickening as he headed down the corridor, the light brightening as he came close to the stairs. He stopped for a moment at the top of the stairs and peered downwards. Again, no sound and no sign of anyone. He stepped onto the stairs and padded noiselessly down to the ground floor. He hesitated again, not sure which way to turn. A slight murmur of low voices could be heard from the direction of where he thought the main living room lay. As he listened, he discerned no change in the rhythm or volume of the voices. The unseen conversation continued, seemingly oblivious to his presence. He looked down the corridor that stretched out before him in the direction opposite to where the voices were coming from. The corridor, lined with a number of closed doors, seemed to peter out into a kind of half-light, so that he couldn't make out its end. Deciding that the ground floor wasn't all that promising, he went back up the stairs, this time continuing on past the first floor to the upper floors.

The landing on the second floor was similar to the one on their floor, but decorated in a lighter colour scheme. Muffled, throbbing music seemed to be emanating from a closed door a little way down the corridor and Ron wondered if the Tournier children's bedrooms were on that floor. He started down the corridor, heading in the direction of the music. On one of the doors was a sketch in black ink of what a muggle might imagine a witch, or maybe a fairy, to look like: a tall woman in a long black robe with long, flaming black hair, apparently in the midst of casting a spell, a black cat wrapping itself around her leg. As Ron drew alongside the door, the wand in the witch's hand suddenly moved in a spell-casting motion and the witch disappeared in a flash of light. Having gone so long without seeing magic, Ron jumped back in surprise then laughed silently at his reaction. After a few seconds, the sketch of the witch returned to its place on the door, now apparently smirking from the page. _Funny how they can get away with doing magic around here_.

'It's too weak for the Array to sense it,' came a girl's voice behind him.

He turned slowly, the rueful smile still on his lips. The smile disappeared when he found himself staring down the pointed end of a thin, sharp blade. The person holding it was not Coralia Tournier, but Tobias Destrument's pallid and emaciated sister. _What was her name? Enid something …_

Seen up close, it was clear that she shared the well-rounded features of her brother, but devoid of all colour and warmth: only her eyes had a touch of blue mingling in the grey. Her lank hair, a sort of dirty ash blonde, hung forlornly on her shoulders and she was dressed in a head-to-toe black tracksuit. The eyes scrutinised Ron with only the slightest hint of amusement, while the blade angled unwaveringly towards his mouth.

'Do you mind?' said Ron in an attempt at outrage.

The blade didn't move an inch.

'You were hoping for someone else, I suppose,' said Enid. Again the tone expressed only the slightest hint of irony.

'I'm just a guest here,' replied Ron, 'I wasn't expecting anyone in particular. And least of all a knife in the face.'

The knife was lowered, but the eyes continued to scrutinise Ron coldly.

'Given that you're sharing this house with wanted criminals, I'd have thought you'd be more cautious,' she remarked. 'But here you are, wandering about on your own. Anyone might sneak up on you.'

There was some truth to those words, he had to admit.

'I thought we were supposed to be allies or something,' he said. 'Why are you sneaking about with a knife and creeping up on people? Or is it just your idea of fun?'

'I don't creep,' she replied, almost hurt. 'People don't notice me.'

'Poor you,' replied Ron in a sarcastic tone. Suddenly the knife was raised again to his face.

'I'm not complaining,' she said nonchalantly. 'It's just a mere statement of fact. I'm not very visible. You didn't see me now. You didn't see me in Ostend either.'

Ron frowned, not quite grasping what she meant, and she smiled coolly.

'If you were there,' said Ron. 'Where were you?'

Enid's smile grew broader.

'Harry Potter is very quick on his feet, I must admit,' she said. 'Or was, I should say. He did very well to avoid the curse I sent his way.'

'You?' exclaimed Ron.

'See, you didn't see me — and yet I was standing right beside my brother.'

Ron tried to recall the night of Belhaine's capture. He couldn't remember seeing the girl at all. And yet the Aurors had done a thorough magical sweep of the house in Ostend, both before and after the actual arrest.

Ron shrugged.

'So what, do you want me to congratulate you or something?'

She angled the knife slightly so that it touched his cheek, but without drawing blood.

'I suppose you wish I had cursed Harry Potter,' she remarked, a thin smile on her lips. 'Still, you must be pleased he got his comeuppance in the end.'

'Pleased?!' Ron exclaimed. 'How can I be pleased that my … a friend's in a coma?'

'If you say so,' Enid replied. 'I'm just basing myself on what I heard he did.'

'You don't know anything about it.'

'Maybe not,' Enid replied, a strangely gentle languor invading her tone. 'We don't know much about each other. We used to be on different sides.'

'Maybe we still are,' Ron countered.

'No, I think we're fated to have to collaborate with each other,' Enid continued.

'I don't know about that,' Ron replied.

'Oh but we are,' she said, with menacing sweetness. 'You've started to notice me already.'

Ron shivered in response. Suddenly footsteps could be heard on the stairs. Ron turned to see Ginny's head appearing over the bannisters.

'I thought I could hear your voice,' said Ginny as she stepped out onto the landing. 'Who were you talking to?'

Ron turned back to where Enid Blackledge had been standing, only to find himself peering down an empty stretch of corridor. The girl had disappeared as silently as she had appeared.

'Umm …' he began.

'What are you doing up here anyway?' asked Ginny, apparently too impatient to wait for his answer. 'You need to come downstairs now.'

'Why?' said Ron.

'Something's happened.'

Ron followed Ginny down to the ground floor. The rest of the Weasley family was gathered in the hall, along with the other wizards who had attended the meeting. Giacomo Tournier rushed past them and through the open door into the living room. The Tournier family was clustered around a large sofa, where a young man lay outstretched and bleeding. Coralia Tournier was sitting next to him on the sofa, holding his hand and stroking it.

'I'm alright,' he was saying as he tried to pull himself upright, but his shirt was stained with blood and his face was white.

'Couldn't we just do a little magic?' said Mrs Tournier in a strained voice, addressing her husband, who was pacing about a little way from the sofa. Mr Tournier stopped and turned to speak to someone standing out of sight, behind the doorway.

'What do you think, Fulke?' he said nervously.

'I wouldn't risk it,' came the reply, delivered in a dry, clipped voice.

'Don't worry, dear,' said Edmund Tournier, turning back to his wife. 'Doctor Sprague will be here in just a minute.'

'Who is that on the sofa?' whispered Ron to his father.

'Darius, Giacomo Tournier's twin brother,' replied Mr Weasley in a low voice, without turning his head.

'What happened?'

'We don't know exactly,' replied Mr Weasley. 'There was a big commotion downstairs when they brought him back, from London apparently. All we know is that he was injured in some sort of fight with witch-hunters.'

'Why is he fighting witch-hunters? I thought the Tourniers were supposed to be experts at pretending not to be wizards.'

'Exactly,' was all Mr Weasley replied.

No more than two minutes passed before the front door bell rang. The door opened and a tall, supercilious man, evidently Doctor Sprague, stepped over the threshold and strode past the assembled witches and wizards in the hall, averting his eyes for the most part. He went straight into the living room and the door closed immediately behind him.

* * *

Ron lay on his side on top of the mattress that had been laid out for him. He had slept on and off through the night, having found it hard to throw off the evening's agitation. It was still dark outside and he had no idea what time it might be. From the regularity of their breathing, both George and Percy seemed to be asleep.

He, George and Percy had sat up a while after everyone had gone back to their rooms. Sometime later the news had filtered through that Darius Tournier was not in any danger, and that had seemed to put an end to the evening's excitement. Ron had been the last to fall asleep.

He rolled onto his back with a sigh. For a few moments he stared blankly up at the ceiling, reflecting that he might as well close his eyes and try and get to sleep. He had no idea what the next day would bring, or whether there was any point in staying at Lightfoot House at all.

He had just resolved to bring up the subject of leaving as soon as everyone was up when there was a gentle tap at the door. He turned awkwardly and called out in a low voice:

'Yes?'

The door opened a few centimetres and Edmund Tournier's face appeared, peering into the semi-dark of the bedroom.

'Could we speak for a moment?' he called out a loud whisper.

Ron looked around at George and Percy, but his brothers made no movement or sign that they were awake.

'What about?' he said, still keeping his voice low.

'We have information for you,' came the reply.

Ron paused for a moment, then pulled himself up off the mattress and went to the door. Blinking in the far brighter light of the corridor, he found himself looking at Edmund Tournier.

'Good morning Mr Weasley,' said another voice, not that of Edmund Tournier. Ron glanced around in surprise and saw another man standing a little further down the corridor. His face was unknown to him, but the voice sounded familiar.

'Mr Weasley, my brother Fulke,' said Edmund Tournier.

There was something of a family resemblance between the two men, only where Edmund Tournier was hale and jovial, Fulke was pallid and grave. His hair was grey and the lines were etched deeper on his face, making him seem the elder by several years.

'Pleased to meet you,' said Fulke in a terse but gentle voice, reaching out his hand for Ron to shake it. Now Ron recognised the voice: it was the voice that he had heard coming from behind the living room door earlier that evening. Ron nodded, half-smiled and shook the man's hand.

'Mr Weasley,' said Fulke. 'I make it my business to gather information. I gather it from many sources, and this morning I gleaned a rather alarming report from one of them. I thought it best that you should be informed.'

The butterflies started to flutter in Ron's stomach.

'Go on,' he said.

Fulke Tournier cleared his throat with a dry, wheezing sort of sound.

'I have a source listening in on the communications of the Safe Magic Campaign. All the talk there is that Hermione Granger has been captured.'

Suddenly the butterflies seemed to dive into an abyss. Ron felt his mouth go very dry. As Ron made no immediate comment, Fulke Tournier went on with his intelligence.

'She was taken in the town of Unham.'

He wasn't sure he had ever heard of the place.

'Evidently Mr Morley indicated that he would attend immediately.'

_If he catches me, he's likely to do terrible things to me_. That was what Hermione had once told him, pacing her office in semi-darkness, the blinds half down. She had warned him, and for a while he had taken the threat very seriously. But weeks passed, then months, then years, and nothing had happened. But with Hermione it was always the same story, the same piercing look of dread in her eyes, the same paranoia.

_If you ask me she's completely paranoid_, Ron had once told Harry after about three pints at the Drover's Arms. _Judas_ he'd called him that evening at Chase End. _He_ had never stopped believing her.

Ron noticed that Fulke Tournier was looking at him rather curiously.

'Is there … anything else?' said Ron at last.

'We've heard very little else,' said Fulke. 'That might be a bad sign, or it might be a good sign.'

'What do you mean?' asked Ron, his tone louder and more nervous.

'It's unusual that we've heard no more about such a … momentous event. It could be that Mr Morley means to keep this capture very quiet, which would, I fear, mean the worst for Miss Granger. On the other hand, it could mean that Mr Morley has encountered a problem. At the moment, we only know that Mr Morley went to Unham. Since then, nothing.'

Ron began to half-turn on his feet. He wanted to be down the stairs and out of the house as quick as he could.

'Are you leaving already, Mr Weasley?' said Fulke in a low voice at Ron's back.

'I have to do something, don't I?' Ron replied, wheeling back round to face the Tourniers. 'Where is this place, Unham?'

Fulke Tournier's face was still and impassive.

'Even if we were to point you in the right direction, we don't yet have the exact location of the witch-hunters' centre of operations in that part of the country.'

'What do you suggest I do then?' said Ron, his hands on his hips.

'Go to Unham, by all means, and have a look around,' said Fulke. 'But I strongly suggest that you don't go alone.'

'Yeah, you're probably right,' said Ron.

'And you'll probably be too late to do anything.'

'Even so, I've got to go.'

'I understand. Who will you take with you?'

Ron started to speak then stopped himself.

'I'll sort something out,' he replied haltingly.

* * *

A nondescript silver hatchback passed through the gates of Lightfoot House and out onto the country lane that led from the estate. Ron was in the middle of the backseat, squashed between Draco Malfoy and Carmody of the Ministry of Magic. Tobias Destrument was driving the car, his eyes intent on the road, and Argenta Coyle was in the front passenger seat, glancing at regular intervals out of the window at the rapid succession of darkened country lanes flashing past. The car went over a bump, causing Carmody to elbow Ron in the side, and causing Ron to jostle Malfoy in turn.

'Watch it, Weasley,' muttered Malfoy in an irritable voice. Ron made no reply and shifted himself back to the middle of his seat, his eyes straight ahead.

This was not the team of wizards that he would have chosen. The kitchen of Lightfoot House had hosted an early morning conclave of wizards, albeit in much reduced form, to discuss what to do about Hermione. There was considerable appetite to take action, from all of the wizarding factions present in the house — the eagerness on the faces of the wizards gathered in the kitchen was plain to see, and even came from quarters least likely to take any interest in trying to rescue Hermione. Ron couldn't quite believe his ears when he heard Draco Malfoy being voted into his company.

'No, I veto him,' Ron had said, waving his finger in Malfoy's direction over the kitchen table.

'Look,' Malfoy had said. 'I'm not going to pretend that I've ever been a fan of Granger.'

Ron had snorted in derision.

'But … she's a wizard. And it's not right that a wizard should be left at the mercy of this witch-hunter scum.'

He had looked hard at Draco Malfoy. He actually seemed to be sincere.

It was late afternoon when they arrived in Unham. It seemed a largish town, and for a while it was unclear how they were to go about trying to track down any witch-hunters. Walking around the town asking questions was hardly likely to do any good, so after a while, at Argenta's suggestion, they took to scouring the streets for people who looked like they might be witch-hunters, witchfinders or safe wizards. And since Argenta had the best idea of what they might look like, she took the lead at directing Tobias Destrument onto the trail of various groups of people walking or driving through town. After several dead ends, and with night falling, they tailed two individuals to a factory building on an industrial estate on the edge of town. Argenta seemed particularly confident that they were witch-hunters. _They've just got that look about them_, she said.

The five wizards stood on the forecourt of the factory, under the orange glare of a nearby streetlamp. No sound or sign of life seemed to be coming from the building they had seen the two men enter. Ron silently lifted his wand from his inside pocket. _What are the chances this is the place_, he wondered. Glancing at the others, he could see that they too had their wands ready, a look of eager anticipation on their faces. He looked once more at the building. He could almost feel the wand straining in the palm of his hand.


	61. The penitence of Lillian Herrick - Ch 14

14\. A suggestion of guilt

_I feel so weak._ It struck Hermione that even if she could escape, she no longer had the strength to do it. She wondered whether some sort of charm had been put on her for the express purpose of sapping her strength, of making her more compliant to whatever fate awaited her. For a moment she wondered if she would soon be seeing Harry, but she dismissed the thought almost as soon as it presented itself. _That would mean believing that he's going to die._

The cavalcade had passed beyond Unham's last residential streets and entered one of its industrial estates. The truck pulled over and a number of grim, track-suited men emerged from a car park to uncouple the parade float. One of them jumped up onto the float and roughly unchained Hermione from her manacle, eyeing her with cold disdain as he did so. He then hauled her down off the float and pushed her into the back of the car that had been following the procession.

As soon as she was inside the car she had a wand pointing in her face, held by a safe wizard sitting in the backseat. Straight away another got into the backseat next to her, so she was squashed between the two of them, wands trained on her from either side. The driver's mobile phone suddenly started ringing; he answered it quickly.

'We'll be there in a few minutes,' he said curtly into the phone.

'We'll be waiting,' came the voice through the mobile phone speaker. She recognised the voice: it was Stephen Morley. The car pulled noiselessly away and continued down the deserted road, lined on one side by an industrial estate and on the other by farmers' fields. It had not travelled very far before it turned off the road, into the precincts of some random and dimly-lit industrial building. _This is the Gasworks Road Industrial Estate_. _So Mike-os was right_.

The car stopped in front of a brick-fronted warehouse. She was escorted out of the car and into the building through a side door. As she walked, a searing pain suddenly shot down her neck. She stopped dead, the pain nearly knocking her off her feet. The next instant it was gone. Hearing a low laugh being her, she looked over her shoulder. The safe wizard standing behind her smiled at her and held up his wand.

'Just a little taste of what you can expect.'

_Is it worth wiping the smile off his face?_ It would be easy enough to do, even without a wand, but the consequences for her would undoubtedly be worse, and quite possibly for Eve and Mike-os too. Instead she stared at him with a dead, glazed expression. After a few moments he looked away, apparently unable to maintain eye contact. This was a moral victory of sorts.

'Get moving,' said the voice of her other guard, prodding her in the back with his wand.

They were soon standing in a vast machine hall largely devoid of machinery. Here the factory walls were mostly bare brick, except for some areas where plaster and paint remained, peeling and ready to fall. The hall echoed to their footsteps as they led her behind some rusting, mothballed piece of production line. Mr Morley was waiting for them, flanked by Charlie Skelton and Chloe Goodwin.

'Secure her,' said Skelton to the guards, presumably lower-ranking members of the organisation. The two safe wizards promptly forced Hermione down onto a metal chair, which was quickly and roughly shackled to the remains of the production line. Then her arms and legs were strapped to the chair. Her bonds seemed to be a combination of magical and conventional restraints. But she had no energy, no will left to resist.

'You can go now,' said Skelton to the guards, who obeyed their order immediately and left, the sound of their footsteps echoing away into the distance.

She raised her head slightly and looked around. Mr Morley stepped forward silently and leaned over her, a faint smile on his face.

'Things have changed somewhat since we last met,' he remarked, his voice almost metallic.

She said nothing and looked away. Mr Morley stood up and looked around him at the empty factory floor.

'Today a fatal blow has been struck against what remains of the wizarding opposition in this country,' he began in declamatory fashion, as if he was addressing some public gathering. 'More will follow.'

He turned to Hermione, leaning over her slightly. His mouth was open, exposing a set of white, regular teeth. There was a look of frenzied exaltation in his eyes.

'And the good news for you is that we won't even need your help to find the rest of your associates.'

She said nothing. _I mustn't show any curiosity._ _I can't help them anymore anyway._

'However, that also makes you rather expendable.'

Still she said nothing. Mr Morley seemed disappointed by her lack of response.

'You had no intention of confessing anyway, I suppose.'

She looked at him for a moment.

'I'm not sure I'll ever speak again.'

She looked away. But he was still speaking.

'But I want to hear you confess. You're so eloquent. I almost enjoy listening to you. Perhaps you can even convince me that witchcraft's not such a bad thing after all. Don't you want to try?'

She said nothing and continued to look away. He reached down and pulled off his glove then raised his hand to her face, catching her by the chin and pulling her head around so that she was forced to look at him. His grip was stronger than she had imagined.

'You'll speak once more, like it or not. You'll tell me something at least. It doesn't even matter if it's true or not. We're not collecting information this evening. I just want a confession. For its own sake.'

She shut her eyes. Her mouth remained closed. Mr Morley glanced up at Charlie Skelton and Chloe Goodwin, a slightly weary expression on his face. Then he looked back at Hermione.

'I can't say I'm surprised,' he remarked, scratching his chin. 'Fortunately, there's an easy way to do this. Ironically it will involve the use of magic, but the ends justify the means.'

'You're fascinated by magic,' said Hermione suddenly with feeling, her eyes flashing open. 'Why don't you just admit it? Maybe you even wish you could use it.'

He seemed pleased that she had decided to speak.

'But you can't,' she continued, numb rage suddenly seething inside her. 'Instead you get off on it vicariously, through your tamed wizards here. You'll never feel the beauty and exhilaration of it, like your sister once did.'

His smile turned to a scowl.

'I suppose that counts as a little confession, nonetheless,' he said darkly. 'You admit how much you like doing magic, how you consider it a thing of beauty. That's a start.'

She made no reply.

'I take a different view. I tell you it's an act of arrogance, of disdain for the natural order. An act of cheating. A sleight of hand in which the audience and the practitioner are in connivance. Each wants to believe that they're participating in something sublime, something beautiful. But it's really no more than an act of power, an abuse of the weak by the strong. Sometimes with the victim's consent; other times without.'

'This discussion is of no interest to me,' replied Hermione. 'The only thing that interests me is what did you do to your sister to make her kill herself.'

Mr Morley looked away for a moment. When he looked back his gaze was frozen, his eyes glassy. He shook his head slowly.

'You and I,' he remarked, his voice distant, 'have no common ground. There seems to be no point in continuing this conversation. I have no intention of continuing it.'

'That's the first good news I've had this evening,' Hermione replied. Mr Morley smiled. The look on his face now seemed to express a kind of grisly satisfaction.

'You'll be doing the talking from now on. I said I wanted a confession from you, and that's what I intend to have.'

'And then what? Do I get a show trial as well?' asked Hermione.

'Only if we're sure that you'll behave yourself and say the right things. We can't have you going on trial convinced of your innocence.'

He nodded to Skelton and Chloe Goodwin. They walked slowly towards Hermione then stopped just a few feet away, their eyes fixed on her. Now she understood what was going to happen. She looked beyond them but her eyes saw only the peeling, claustrophobic factory walls. Suddenly she wished she could die in the open air, beneath a sky full of stars. She didn't have the strength to fight off even one of the wizards silently fixing her with their gaze, let alone two. She closed her eyes and waited.

Only a couple of moments passed before she felt a creeping calm invade her mind and body. She was relieved that she would finally have the opportunity to tell her story, to reveal each act of cruelty, perversion and deceit that she had revelled in since the first time she discovered she had been given the gift of magic. She was proud of what she had done.

'_Tell him who was the first person you killed,'_ said the voice in her ear, which spoke with her voice. The memory was before her in an instant. She was no more than twelve, it was not long after she started at Hogwarts.

'_I was twelve,'_ she began, in a cold, amused voice.

She stood in a wood, in the park near her house. It was winter, and a cold wind whipped dead, damp leaves around her feet. She raised her wand over the teenaged boy who lay sprawled at her feet on his back, his chest bare and splattered with blood.

'_Who was the victim?'_ said the voice.

'_He lived on my street. He was about fourteen. It was easy to get him to follow me under the trees.'_

'_He thought it was his lucky day, I suppose.'_

'_Yes,'_ she said, a cold laugh in her voice. '_He thought his chance had come at last. To get his hands on me.'_

'_What did you do to him?'_

'_I told him to lay down on the ground, in the dirt and the dead leaves. I told him to take off his shirt: I wanted to see the blood. It was cold, but he did what I said. Then I took out my wand and began to say the incantation. When he saw the wand and saw my lips moving silently, speaking the curse, he got scared. He tried to get up but I pinned him to the ground.'_

'_Then what?'_

A tremor of excitement surged through her, as it had done that day.

'_Then I opened his chest and throat. The blood splattered over the dead leaves and seeped into the mud.'_

'_How did you dispose of the body?'_

'_Easiest thing in the world_', she said. '_I incinerated it using magic. Then I got rid of the scorch marks and the blood on the ground. No one saw me leave and no one ever knew what happened to him.'_

As she spoke, she saw the scene before her closed eyes and luxuriated in it. She could taste the hate in her mouth, the ecstatic, soaring hatred as the spell ripped into the flesh of the boy's chest. The scene seemed perfect, but for a tiny nagging doubt. _This is just a dream after all. What a pity._ She struggled to dismiss the doubt, but the more she tried, the more it kept crawling back to her. And now disappointment was giving way to horror. _How can I dream of doing this? How can I want this?_ Then the bleeding corpse in the mud, under the trees, was gone.

'No, she said suddenly. 'It's not true. I could never do those things.'

At once a kind of sickly sweetness pervaded her mind and she forgot her objections. She saw the dead boy again, lying on the leaves. _What a thrill it had been. My first kill._

'_Next question: what was the most recent killing you participated in?'_

Again she felt a tingling calm filter through her body. At first she saw only darkness. Then gradually the darkness faded to grey. She stood in the ruins of what had once been a factory, its walls blasted and tumbling, pieces of machinery rusting where they lay half-dismantled, a grey, moonlight sky visible through the collapsed roof. Harry stood to her right, one side of his face cut and bleeding, and Caius stood to her left, a humourless expression on his face. Both were looking down at the ground. Then she saw the bodies, stretched out in the rubble. She counted them without emotion. Six people lay dead in the dust. Most of them were teenagers, and a couple seemed to be little more than children. They had no wands and looked like muggles.

'_They were scavenging for scrap metal,'_ she began in the same cold voice. '_They were trespassing on our territory: that factory is where our coven meets.'_

'_This was disrespectful to you.'_

'_Yes, but it was a good opportunity to relieve the boredom. To have some fun.'_

'_Quite right.'_

They had watched the scavengers in silence as they picked nervously through the wreckage in the factory. At one point Harry had taken out his wand and cast a little enchantment that sounded like a clanging door. It was hilarious when they all jumped up in the air in fright.

'_The first time they came, we hid ourselves and let them walk away. But when they came back a second time, we ambushed them and killed them. Useless junk. No one will miss them.'_

Chills ran up and down her body as she looked down at the bodies. _Six at once is so much better than one._ She looked across at Harry and smiled. He looked back at her languidly, his pupils dilated. _He will be rewarded for this._

'_Very efficient_,' said the voice in her head. The fact that her efforts were appreciated caused a surge of elation inside her.

'_Tell me about the coven. What is its name?'_

'_The Black Wing.'_

'_And what is your position in the Coven?'_

'_I'm the Head of it_.'

'_How long have you been active?'_

She laughed. After a few moments the disembodied voice began to laugh along with her, softly and sardonically.

'_It's funny_,' she said. '_We actually fought against Voldemort. We had long been part of a faction that opposed him. But then Harry destroyed him, and we realised how weak he had been all along. We were the strongest. Well, I suppose Harry was the most powerful wizard, but I made sure he was under my thumb._

'_You mean Harry Potter of course?'_

'_Who else could it have possibly been?'_

'_You had won the war.'_

'_Yes, and then it was up to us to show everyone, wizards and muggles, what we were capable of.'_

'_You had to outdo Voldemort's cruelty.'_

'_Yes, but we had to do it differently. Those kids in the factory, we didn't kill them because they were muggles. We killed them because they were there.'_

'_You have no cause.'_

'_Of course not. It's what made Voldemort so pathetic. After all, he was just another politician, a little Hitler, with his stupid little cause, his stupid hatred of muggles. He was the weak one, after all.' _

'_How did you assemble your group?'_

'_I handpicked the other members. I subjugated those who were not already bound to me.'_

'_And sexual promiscuity was the norm.'_

'_They were all bound to me. They all did my bidding. Of course, I had my favourites.'_

'_That must have been immensely gratifying to you.'_

'_If you know what it means to have absolute power over others, then you'll understand how it feels.'_

'_And apart from straight killing, I suppose there have been many who were maimed, cursed, tortured.'_

'_We don't keep records of every act we perpetrate. We're not that kind of organisation. And I really can't remember every incident. What would be the point? Most curses are quite dull. I only remember the ones that give me particular pleasure.'_

She found herself looking again at the corpses strewn on the factory floor.

'_What shall we do with the bodies_?' said Harry in a bored voice.

'_Burn them, as usual_,' she replied.

Harry muttered an incantation and a jet of fire leapt from his wand, engulfing one of the bodies. Then Caius did the same. She looked at the body closest to her. She noticed for the first time that it was the body of a young girl.

_I feel clean now_. The thought struck her as strange as she raised her wand. And there was something else strange: the corpse was smiling at her.

The dead girl had opened her eyes.

'_Look at the sky_,' she said. Hermione looked up instinctively. The dream, or the memory, or whatever it was, had vanished. Once again she was tied to a chair in an abandoned factory, Mr Morley and his two tamed wizards standing over her, still revelling in the confession they had extracted from her. But something was different: the factory seemed to have lost its roof, revealing a vast sky of churning stars high above them.

Now the factory itself seemed to have vanished altogether, disintegrated into a sprawling, wreckage-strewn wasteland, although the stagnant, metallic air that hung between its walls seemed to linger. There was no breeze, no chill of night air. Mr Morley and his wizards were also looking upwards, transfixed by the star-filled sky tinted deep red, redder than she had ever seen it. Then something else claimed their attention: two of the corpses had risen to their feet and were grinning back at them. They each reached out an arm, pointed at Charlie Skelton and Chloe Goodwin, and with nothing more than a slight movement of the hand made them drop to the ground. Dimly Hermione understood that someone else had taken over the show, but who it was, she dreaded to think.

Mr Morley had seemingly woken from his trance. He reached into his inside pocket, his eyes glazed and opaque, and took out a knife. _Really, is that all you are? A murderer?_

The risen corpses made no attempt to stop him, instead looking on with amused expressions. He leaned over her again, the knife gleaming in his hand. Her heart began to beat rapidly and she looked up into Mr Morley's eyes. It was as if she wanted to take in every detail before her while she still had the chance: Stephen Morley's face, the blade and handle of the knife, his smooth, muscular hand. In his expression there was a dim look of disgust that somehow seemed directed not at her but at the act he was about to commit. Seconds elapsed and still he did nothing. She wanted to close her eyes, but she couldn't. There was still one last curiosity in her. His gaze seemed to grope for something in the darkness. It seemed confused, lost. It was then that he shifted the position of the knife and cut the ropes that bound her. Then he looked up and beyond her; his eyes wide. Hermione looked around. Even without the ropes, she scarcely had the strength to move. The two corpses were still there, only their faces had changed: they were no longer the teenagers she had supposedly slaughtered. Instead they looked vaguely familiar. But she couldn't name them: a great weight lay on her mind, a mixture of guilt and confusion, snuffing out rational thought. She groped for the names, but in her mind she could only see a wall that seemed to block all attempts to speak the words she was searching for. At last, instead of words, an image began to draw itself on the wall: it was a seven-pointed circle.

The wall was gone, and Lillian Herrick was standing there, flanked by Iona Deasy and the dark-haired girl who had once taken a pint of Hermione's blood. A strange light shone from their eyes. Here was Lillian as Hermione had never seen her before — dressed in a long, flowing red robe, her dark hair hanging almost to her waist. Her face was pale and her green eyes burned maliciously. Hermione felt elation at the sight of her. She found that she had been deprived of her company for too long. _Are you playing the witch, Lillian? Couldn't you have been a bit subtler?_ A smile of acknowledgement flashed across Lillian's face. _This is his fantasy, Hermione, not mine_.

'Do you know me?' she said to Mr Morley, who seemed rooted to the spot.

'No,' he replied, his voice drained of its usual composure.

'Of course you don't.'

'Perhaps you've come to the wrong place then?' he suggested.

'Oh that's right, it must be a different witch being tortured in a disused factory that I'm looking for,' replied Lillian, apparently highly amused at the idea. 'Don't worry — everyone is right where they should be. I put down the crumbs and you followed them here, like little hungry birds.'

'What on earth are you talking about?' asked Mr Morley coolly, as if he was dressing down a particularly impertinent journalist. Despite everything, Hermione could hardly keep herself from laughing.

'You think you've pulled off the greatest feat in history,' said Lillian, fixing him with her gaze until he flinched. 'You've unmasked the great and secret society of witches, exposed them to the entire world, and now you're hunting them down, one by one. Your name will be recorded for posterity. And yet you haven't the faintest idea that you've been watched, guided, nurtured all the way.'

'What makes you think I would believe you?' said Mr Morley, his eyes blinking with surprise and uncertainty. 'You seem like a complete lunatic to me. Just another deranged witch.'

'I'm not expecting gratitude,' replied Lillian. 'But a little humility on your part wouldn't go amiss. And given that it took us about one second to bring your nasty little spectacle to an end, I'd recommend you show a bit more concern for your own safety. We could do anything we like with you. You really have no idea.'

'Why don't you?' Mr Morley replied grimly.

'Because I'm not some psychopath salivating over an innocent young woman tied to a chair.'

For a moment, Mr Morley seemed to contemplate his position, presumably to consider what sort of light it showed him in.

'She's not innocent,' he replied. 'There are no innocent witches.'

'By that, I suppose you mean there are no innocent living witches,' replied Lillian. From the pained look on Mr Morley's face, Hermione could tell that he had taken the inference.

'Why are you here then?' he asked in a lower, drier voice. 'Other than to take credit for our work and parade about here like some sort of gothic fairy godmother in a bad panto.'

Lillian stepped forward so that she was standing over Hermione. She looked down at her for a moment and smiled. Then she leaned down and kissed Hermione on the forehead, at the same time running her hand through her hair.

'You've taken one of mine,' said Lillian. 'And not just anyone.'

'You're part of the same coven, are you?'

'More than that. We're bound by blood. Do you think I would let you touch my little sister?'

Hermione had long since decided to play the role of spectator in this strange confrontation. But now she had really heard everything.

'You of all people know what it means to lose a sister,' said Lillian, smiling maliciously at the Witchfinder. As she spoke she took Hermione's hand in her free hand, gripping it tightly. Hermione looked up at her. She was acting out a strange theatre indeed, but Hermione had to admit that Lillian was very good at it. She almost wanted to believe it herself.

Mr Morley looked at Hermione for a moment, then back at Lillian. He was struggling to keep his cool.

'There's no comparison,' he replied in an even voice. 'My sister was a victim of witchcraft. The two of you crawled from some brood of serpents.' He gripped the knife in his hand tighter, as if he was struggling with it.

'Just try it, if you think you can,' said Lillian in a lower voice. 'But I warn you, you'll slit your own throat before you slit hers.'

Mr Morley dropped the knife. It hit the floor with a metallic clang. He gawped down at the floor. Clearly he had not dropped the knife by accident.

'There would be a pleasing circularity about that, don't you think?' she remarked. 'You set out to avenge a suicide, only to end up killing yourself with the knife you want to use to kill an innocent woman.'

'That is the last time you mention my sister,' Mr Morley shouted, his voice cracking. He jerked a finger into the air and pointed it loosely at Lillian Herrick. Lillian smiled, as Hermione knew she would.

'Do you think she's looking down on you, congratulating you for what you've done?'

'She can't look down on me. She sees nothing. The power to see and feel and hope was taken from her. Because of the likes of you, she will never see another morning.'

Lillian stared at him. Her eyes were as dark as coals, with just a glimmer of green.

'I have one last piece of advice for you,' she said pointedly. 'Don't underestimate the dead.'

Mr Morley looked at Lillian Herrick in silence. His face was grim and ashen, hers radiant. Hermione looked up at them standing over her. It was almost as if she had been forgotten. Perhaps she could just get up and walk away; leave them to their big scene. But she realised that she didn't have the will to try. She rolled her head so that she was looking away from them and closed her eyes. She didn't want to see or hear anything anymore.


	62. The penitence of Lillian Herrick - Ch 15

15\. Wands meet

Before Imogen had any time to ask what it was she wasn't going to like, she was swept off her feet and swallowed up in darkness. Lights whirled before her eyes, and her body felt as if it had been separated into dark and light, swirling in front of her. _An out of body experience I suppose_, she thought, with a lucidity that surprised her. The murky blur that had enveloped her ended as abruptly as it had begun and she was spewed out back into the light.

Her body had come to a standstill but her head was still turning, making it hard for her to focus long enough to see where she was. But the wave of nausea that followed was enough to make where she was a matter of complete indifference. Half-raising herself up on her elbows, she swiftly vomited onto the cold stone floor. As she turned onto her side, she felt a strong tug on her arm, dragging her away from the spot where she had been sick and pulling her behind what looked like a pile of plastic packing crates.

The air was full of the sound of little explosions, only the noises repeatedly going off seemed too graceful to be explosions. She rolled onto her back and found herself looking up at a rusting corrugated roof. Lights of myriad colours accompanied the graceful explosions, creating an effect like some sort of haphazard disco lighting. She glanced to her left and saw Caius pointing his wand at some unseen opponent. _So this is what wizards fighting looks like_. As light flashed from the end of the wand, other lights shattered all around him. The feeling of nausea gone, Imogen pulled herself into a sitting position behind the plastic crates.

The coven wizards she had travelled with were spread out around the dilapidated factory floor. It seemed to her that they were winning the fight, although it was actually rather hard to distinguish the two sides. The wizards on both sides all looked remarkably similar to each other, but there were others, tough-looking men who instead of a wand were wielding any sort of blunt or sharp object they could get hold of.

Already the floor was littered with prostrate bodies, but the bodies showed no outward signs of injury. _Are they dead or just unconscious_?

But as she followed the sound and light show, a new front suddenly seemed to open up in the middle of the fight: new wizards arrived from nowhere, firing their wands off at everyone and immediately coming under fire themselves from both sides. And now Imogen had a wand pointed at her.

Curses were already flying everywhere as Ron stepped out onto the factory floor. He had been prepared for a swift response from the safe wizards, but not that swift: curses were being fired even before they arrived. He scrambled to shelter behind a metal pillar, looking around him at the fight that was already raging: he could see the safe wizards and their muggle witch-hunter muscle, but who were the other wizards? On both sides he could make out faces that were vaguely familiar: former Hogwarts students or Ministry officials, he supposed. He looked round at Malfoy, Tobias Destrument, Argenta Coyle and Carmody. Their faces were taut with excitement and their wands poised to strike.

A curse exploded just above Ron's head. A moment later, a curse of his own was headed straight for the spot it had been sent from. After so many months without magic, the pent-up exhilaration was already coursing through his body. He watched at his curse shot towards a girl with blond hair, who parried it with a swift flourish of her wand. But instead of trying to curse him again, the girl was waving at him and shaking her head, her wand hanging loose in the other hand.

'We're on the same side!' she shouted at Ron over the noise of the curses. She certainly looked familiar, but there wasn't time to try and place her.

'Are we?' shouted Ron, still pointing his wand at her.

'We're fighting the safe wizards, what are you doing?' she shouted again.

'Err … same thing, I think!' Ron shouted back.

The blonde witch gestured across the factory floor.

'We're here with Caius!' she shouted.

Ron followed her gaze, just in time to see Caius Hanmer leap out of the way of a curse. _What's he doing here?_

'Caius!' Ron shouted. 'What's going on?'

'Looks like we all got the same information!' shouted Caius, as he took up a new position in the wreckage of a half-collapsed mezzanine level.

'Hermione, you mean?' said Ron.

Caius nodded.

'By the way,' said Caius, pointing to the girl Ron had tried to curse, 'would you mind not cursing Meredith please? She's my cousin.'

_Of course, Meredith Dulse, Gryffindor keeper after me._

'Sorry about that!' he shouted. 'Didn't recognise you at first. How did it go with the Holyhead Harpies?'

Meredith smiled back at him then sent a curse flying over his shoulder. Ron wheeled around in surprise and anger, only to see a hulking, shaven headed man crumple just behind him, a crowbar slipping from his hands and clattering on the floor.

'It was going well until… well, you know,' she replied.

'Yeah, I know,' said Ron sheepishly. 'Thanks, by the way.'

Deciding he needed to take a moment to work out exactly who was fighting whom, he sprinted for a pile of packing crates, which seemed to offer more shelter than the pillar. As he turned the corner he almost crashed into Malfoy, who was standing over someone sitting or lying on the floor behind the packages.

'Who are you?!' shouted the thin-faced man with receding, jet-black hair. Imogen looked at the wand that was pointed at her. _This must be what it's like to have a loaded gun pointed at you_. She couldn't quite take in the seriousness of it, despite the damage that wands were obviously doing all around her.

'I'm not one of them! Please put that down!' she shouted in a voice that was more commanding than she had intended.

'You're a muggle though,' said the man, his wand motionless and still directed at her. _Muggle_. She knew what it meant, but it sounded strange to be called it all the same.

'I came here with Caius Hanmer,' Imogen continued, folding her arms with a calm that surprised her. 'We're looking for Hermione Granger.'

The man's expression softened at the mention of Caius, but seemed to harden again in response to the name of Hermione Granger. But before he could respond, someone came barging into him.

'What the devil? Weasley!' he shouted peevishly, pushing the newcomer back.

'Malfoy?' Err … sorry,' said the newcomer, whose name was apparently Weasley, regaining his footing and himself now staring at Imogen as she sat on the floor with her arms folded. The most striking thing about him was his unkempt mop of bright red hair. He pointed his wand at her as well.

'What are you doing down there?' he asked suspiciously.

'Says she came here with Caius Hanmer, looking for Granger,' said the man called Malfoy, casting a cool look at the other wizard. _Weasley_. She knew the name. She thought of the file that had been handed over to her when she started the magic affairs job. Weasley was the name of an extensive wizarding family thought to be still at large. But Weasley was also one of the three names she had heard bandied about as the most famous and illustrious of the age:

_Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley_

She looked quizzically at the red-headed man pointing his wand at her. The expression on his face seemed just as puzzled as hers.

'Are you Ron Weasley?' she blurted out, as soon as the thought presented itself to her.

'None of your business!' he replied. Just then the plastic crates were overturned by a curse, bursting into green flame. Imogen leapt to her feet and jumped a few feet back.

The two wizards turned and began to fire off curses of their own. Imogen began to step away from them, backing off towards the wall. The green flames were dwindling, but the crates were twisted and scorched. The red-haired wizard turned back to face her.

'Stay there!' he commanded. Then the two wizards were gone.

_Has it come to this?_ Ron glanced grimly at the wizard standing next to him. Draco Malfoy's thin white face was one of total concentration as he fired off curse after curse, finally flooring a safe wizard with long, braided red hair. _He's still pretty useful with a wand, I have to admit_. Malfoy glanced back at him and shot him a sneering sort of look, but the attempt at nonchalance was undermined by the flashing excitement in his eyes.

The wizards who had come with Ron were fighting furiously alongside Caius Hanmer's contingent, firing off curses in every direction as new safe wizards and witch-hunters kept appearing on the factory floor. Ron saw a dark-haired girl, one of Caius's wizards, thrown against a wall, half-caught by an exploding curse. For a few seconds she lay sprawled on the floor, then rolled over and leapt back to her feet, immediately returning the curses. Argenta Coyle took down two witch-hunters at once, and was moving towards a third when a curse came shooting towards her. The curse formed itself into a flying blade, and seemed only inches from her head when Tobias Destrument parried it with a curse of its own. The blade shattered in a flash of white light, dazzling Argenta, who dropped to her knees, desperately trying to cover her eyes. But she too recovered quickly, nodding swiftly at Destrument.

By now the safe wizards and witch-hunters were outnumbered. Stunned wizards were strewn about the factory floor and many of the muggle witch-hunters had fled, but not before laying into the wizards with fists and any other random objects they could get their hands on. A few feet away, a stream of blood was pouring from the nose of the Ministry wizard Carmody as he stood over a hulking witch-hunter, kicking him to make sure he was unconscious.

The din of curses and shouting had finally died down. The wizards gathered in the centre of the factory. Many were bleeding, their clothes scorched and torn, their faces pale, but the eyes were bright, exhilarated by the fight and the chance to do magic. The two teams of wizards shook hands as they caught their breath.

'We should get out of here as soon as possible,' said Caius suddenly, already looking around. 'Reinforcements will be here any moment. Hopefully we didn't come here for nothing.'

_Hermione_, thought Ron. _Was she there somewhere_? Suddenly it didn't seem all that likely.

'Search everywhere,' said Caius, who seemed to have taken command. 'We leave once we're covered every inch of this place.'

'Excuse me,' said a voice from off to the side of the gathering. The gathering parted and the young muggle woman stepped into the circle. 'I'd quite like to be kept up-to-date with what's going on too.'

She directed her remark at Caius, who looked back at her with a slightly embarrassed expression. Ron almost laughed out loud. There was something in her clipped delivery that reminded him of Hermione.

'Like I was saying,' began Caius in a low, placid tone. 'We're going to search for prisoners then get out of here.'

'And who are these people?' said the woman, swivelling her head and almost glaring in Ron's general direction.

'And who are you, by the way?' retorted Carmody, brandishing his wand at her as if to stress the point that she didn't have one.

'Imogen Sontley of the Agency for Magical Affairs,' said the woman, her grey eyes examining Carmody slowly.

'She's on our side. She's helping us,' said Caius quickly as wands began to be raised. 'Before we lose any more time …' he continued, 'Imogen, these are Ron Weasley, Draco Malfoy, Tobias Destrument, Argenta Coyle and Edwin Carmody. They obviously heard the same news we did. And I'm glad they did. Now let's get going.'

Imogen Sontley shot Ron a withering look, but said nothing. In the meantime, Caius's wizards had already dismissed themselves and were spreading out around the building. Ron headed in the direction of a door he had spotted at the far end of the factory, all the time aware that yet more safe wizards might arrive any moment. He opened the door and caught up with a couple of Caius's wizards. A long, dingy corridor that had presumably once housed the factory offices spread out in front of him, with closed doors and opaque glass partitions running down either side. The walls were otherwise bare and a few pieces of dirty brown carpet still lined the floor. One of Caius's wizards tried the handle on the first door: it was locked so she blasted it open with her wand. Inside the office was bare, empty and long-since abandoned. The wizards went on their way, blasting open the doors, but the offices seemed to contain nothing of interest.

They had got halfway down the corridor when a loud howl of pain rang out through the walls. The wizards quickened their pace, making for where the howl had come from. The corridor ended in a door, which in turn opened onto a staircase.

'You go up, I'll go down,' he said to the other two. They nodded and headed up the stairs. Ron headed into the basement. The stairs opened out onto a similar corridor, only darker and damper. More offices led off it. Another scream of pain, this time louder. He was sure he was near. Vague shadows could be seen through the dirty glass partition of one of the offices. He blasted the door open and went in.

When he got inside he stopped dead: pushed against the back wall of the office were two people tied to chairs, hoods over their heads and blood splattered on the floor in front of them. On the opposite side of the room stood two wizards, their wands pointed at the hooded prisoners as if they were about to perform an execution. They didn't turn to the door or speak but their voices were instantly inside Ron's head.

'_Don't move or you know what will happen_,' said the voices, a man's voice and woman's mingled together, sneering and cold. Oddly, he couldn't make out the executioners' faces: it was as if they were a shadow or a blur. _Could one of the prisoners be Hermione?_ Ron thought to himself. The voices in his head began to laugh. _Wouldn't you like to know?_ Ron tried to stop himself from thinking, but a thought slipped out: _What am I supposed to do now?_

_Walk out of here slowly and calmly, and don't tell anyone you've seen us_. _You've got three seconds to leave us_, the voices insisted. _Or it'll get very messy here_.

The outstretched wands seemed to glow red then green. Ron glanced at the door.

_One … two …_ whispered the voices.

Then there was a flash of light, but not from the executioners' wands. It came from another source, seemingly from within the room. Suddenly one of the two executioners was prostrate on the floor, stunned. The other turned and sent a curse in the direction of the light, but the light parried it. The next second the executioner who was still standing had disapparated and the light had abated.

Isaac Edwards was standing in the middle of the office, a young woman next to him. She looked vaguely familiar to Ron, but he couldn't place where he had seen her before. Her eyes were glazed, as if they had been dazzled by the light that Edwards had cloaked himself in. Still pointing his wand at the fallen wizard, his arms gradually relaxed and slowly he put his wand back inside his coat. He squatted down at the side of the prostrate body, frowning as he scrutinised its face. 'Ramsden,' he muttered to himself. 'Normally based out of Sorcery Square. Quite high-ranking. One of Marchelow's men.'

His assessment of the stunned safe wizard complete, he looked up at Ron. He nodded briefly then stood up, offering his hand for Ron to shake.

'Hello Mr Weasley,' he said in his normal grave tone,

'Err … hello …' Ron replied. 'What are you doing here?'

Isaac Edwards almost seemed to smile.

'It seems I got the same message as everyone else.'

'Really? Who told you?'

Edwards was the closest Ron had ever seen him to looking amused. Ron couldn't see what was funny.

'The same person as you most likely.'

For a moment they stared at each other, seemingly unsure what to do next.

'The prisoners …' said Edwards, turning to face the hooded figures propped up against the wall.

Ron nodded, his heart suddenly pounding in his chest. Reaching the prisoners simultaneously, Ron pulled off the hood of the right-hand prisoner, while Isaac Edwards did the same for the one on the left.

_Neither of them is Hermione_. Ron's heart rate suddenly slowed back down as he found himself looking at a young man and a young woman he had never seen before. They stared at Ron and Edwards in silence as they untied them, their eyes wide with fear and from exposure to the light.

'Are you alright?' said Edwards, quickly casting a healing charm to close up a long gash running across the young man's chest.

'I'm ok,' he mumbled in reply.

'You're safe now,' said Edwards. 'You're with friendly wizards here.'

'Who are you?' asked Ron. 'What are you doing here? Have you seen Hermione Granger?'

Their eyes registered recognition at the mention of her name.

'She's our friend,' began the girl, her voice faltering.

'They arrested us for sheltering her,' added the man almost simultaneously. 'We didn't know she was a witch.'

'They took her away to parade her through the streets,' said the girl. 'Then they brought us here. They said we were going to be punished for helping her.'

'Did they bring her here as well?' asked Edwards.

'Um … we don't know,' said the girl.

'She was here.' Ron glanced over his shoulder. The strange young woman who had arrived together with Edwards was speaking for the first time. 'She was taken before we got here.' Despite the faraway expression on her face, her voice seemed to express total certainty.

'And who took her?' Edwards asked, looking over at the strange girl. The question was put in an almost off-hand tone.

'Lillian did,' came the reply.

'How do you know?'

'The Circle has been used here very recently,' she said.

'Hang on, you're saying that Lillian Herrick has got Hermione?' said Ron, turning round fully to face the strange girl.

The girl seemed amused by the question.

'Don't worry, I'm sure she'll look after her,' said the girl. 'At least, better than the witch-hunters.'

'Right,' said Ron. 'Who are you again?'

'My apologies for not doing the introductions,' said Edwards. 'This is Rachel Thirlwell, formerly one of the Seven of Sie. Rachel, this is …'

'I know who he is,' Rachel replied. 'He's the one who didn't believe Hermione.'

'What do you know about it?' exclaimed Ron. The girl was really starting to put him on edge.

'Much more than you can imagine,' she replied.

At this point the door was flung open. Everyone wheeled around, those with wands pointing them at the open door.

'Time to get out of … What are you doing here?!'

Argenta Coyle stood in the doorway, gawping at the sight of Isaac Edwards.

'We found the prisoners,' said Edwards in his usual dry tone. 'Ramsden was here. He's the one laid out on the floor. Hermione isn't here anymore.'

'Right,' said Argenta, still looking a little confused as she processed this barrage of information. 'Anyway, we need to leave here right now.'

As she spoke, the sound of fresh explosions could be heard coming from down the corridor.


	63. The penitence of Lillian Herrick - Ch 16

16\. The seventh

There was no escaping the memories once she was awake. The dead bodies on the factory floor, the boy lying dead on the fallen leaves, the inexplicable cruelty on Harry's face. There must have been countless others, nameless and forgotten. _How could I have done those things_? From where she lay on the bed, she examined her pale, slender hands. They bore no trace of murder on them.

Beyond the bed there was an expanse of wall, covered with ancient wallpaper in a pattern that had once been garish, but which was now dusty and tired. Above it flecks of paint peeled from the ceiling. To the other side she could see part of a window. Dark branches hung close to the smeared glass. She surmised that she was a guest of Lillian Herrick, but that didn't matter. The spilled blood seemed to rise in her throat, choking her and leaving a metallic taste in the mouth.

She tried telling herself that she hadn't actually done those things. _Who killed them then? How come you can see their faces?_ An explanation seemed to present itself: _these are someone else's memories, forced onto me_. But whenever the explanation suggested itself, she cast it away as a pathetic attempt to avoid responsibility.

Out of the corner of her eye she noticed a tray of food had been laid on the bare floorboards. She looked away immediately: eating was out of the question. She had no memory of being brought to that room, or of what she had done since she got there. There was only the dead and her guilt.

She drifted in and out of consciousness, sometimes waking up on the bed, other times on the floor. Only it wasn't quite sleep that she was waking from — rather it was a sort of waking oblivion, a darkness and numbness, punctured by the whispers of unknown voices. Waking always brought the faces of the dead back to her.

Worse still than the sight of the dead was the memory of the acts of violence themselves: the terrible wrenching open of flesh, the screams of pain, the burning of the corpses. And all done for the sake of entertainment. _Don't hide from it_, a voice seemed to say in her head. _You can't undo what's been done. Hysteria won't help - it'll only lead to the oblivion of madness. Accept your guilt. You don't even have to revel in it. Just be lucid. Look at your hands and say I did all those things. _

Trays of food were removed and replaced, but she never saw anyone. Sometimes she heard footsteps in the corridor, and murmured voices. _Just be lucid_, the voice had said. _Maybe there's a shard of glass in this room, or a rusty nail,_ she thought suddenly. She started to try and look around her but she could scarcely lift her head.

'Hermione,' said a voice, waking her from semi-consciousness. It was a girl's voice. She opened her eyes. A girl was standing over her. Her face was familiar.

'Tell her she can't be left alone anymore,' said the girl, turning and speaking to someone behind her.

'Ok,' came a voice from the doorway.

'Hermione,' she said again, her voice gentle but authoritative. 'They're lies. You didn't kill anyone.'

She wanted to believe her.

'You were being tortured,' said the girl, touching Hermione's cheek. 'They wanted to make you believe you had killed people. We rescued you and brought you here. Lillian said to leave you until you fought it off. She said it'll make you stronger. But if you refuse to eat any longer you'll be dead.'

_Dead like you_, Hermione thought. She knew the girl's face. She had been among the dead lying on the factory floor.

'Are you here to punish me?' she asked.

The girl looked worried.

'You're not dead!' she said in a louder voice, her eyes probing more intently.

'How do you know?'

'I was there,' replied the girl. 'Eva and I entered the memory they were creating for you. Didn't you see us?'

Again she saw the girl's body lying on the floor of the factory. The body had got up off the floor and spoken to her. She struggled for a name. _Iona Deasy_. _One of the Seven_.

'Yes, I saw you,' said Hermione. 'You and another of the Seven.'

Iona nodded quickly.

'Eva. It was me and Eva.'

She remembered something else.

'Lillian called me innocent.'

There was something like a smile on Iona's face.

'Yes, I suppose she did. Must have been a slip of the tongue.'

Hermione wanted to laugh, but only a rasping cough escaped her lips.

'Will you eat?' said Iona again.

She looked at the food and then up at Iona's face.

'I can't,' she replied.

'You have to,' said another voice. It was another of them. A young man with a scraggly beard. The name presented itself almost immediately: _Justin Pole_. The two of them were looking down at her, their eyes vaguely hypnotic. Each of them had taken hold of one of her hands. Suddenly she saw the boy lying dead under the leaves. Only he wasn't dead: he was standing under the same trees, holding hands with another girl. The girl actually looked a bit like her. Then he saw the same boy, only older. He was wearing a suit and standing on a tube station platform in the rush hour.

'Do you understand now?' came Iona's voice from behind the image. 'He's alive and living a totally normal life. You never even knew him. Do you want to see the others? The supposed corpses in the factory? They're all grown up. Some of them are married, some of them even have children.'

A rush of elation welled up in her. Her first thought was to get up off the bed. She tried to pull herself up, but her limbs gave way and she slid back onto the bed. But she felt better, even if the feeling of guilt was still present in the background. She looked around the room, but for the first time with interest, with curiosity.

The room was spacious, but its sparse decor seemed not to have been changed for decades. A musty smell hung in the air. Iona and Justin Pole were still standing there, a little way from the bed. Iona had a look of concern on her face; Justin's expression was closed and distant. She stared at them, not sure what they wanted from her.

'Will you help me to sit up a little?' she said finally.

Iona helped to prop her up against the pillow. From where she was sitting Hermione could see out of the window. Beyond the twisted branches of the tree growing too close to the house, she saw the sweep of hills and the forest and heathland, a landscape that was overwhelmingly familiar to her. _Hogwarts._ It was only a walk away, following what was called the Witches' March. She had seen the picture of the castle on the front page of a newspaper, and had once caught a glimpse of it on TV, but she had changed the channel straight away. It had been enough to know that they hadn't destroyed it. She couldn't bear to know anymore. _How weak of me_. Now, if she could, she would walk out of the room, out of the old farmhouse and across the hills, at least to stand in front of the school's gates.

'Why are you being nice to me?' she asked, looking back from the window.

'You set the bar pretty low when it comes to being nice,' Iona replied. 'Anyway, why would we rescue you only to let you die?'

'I understand,' said Hermione. 'But why not let me believe I killed those people? I thought you would all want to feel as guilty as possible here.'

'Lillian said it wouldn't quite be in the spirit of things,' Iona replied. 'What with them not being genuine memories.'

'So eventually I'd have realised that they weren't real?'

'You'd have starved yourself to death first,' said Justin, in a strange impassive voice.

'I see,' said Hermione, the coolness of her tone taking her by surprise. 'And Lillian needs me alive.'

'Something like that.'

* * *

'Do you want the clothes you came here in or shall we give you some new ones?'

A voice roused her from a shallow sleep. She rocked her head to one side and looked towards the door. Standing rather hesitantly in the middle of the bare room was the girl whose name was Eva.

Draped forlornly over a chair at the other end of the room lay the outfit Natalie Grey had been wearing as a sort of thin disguise on her last day in Unham.

'I suppose new clothes would be more fitting,' Hermione replied.

The girl nodded.

'I'm sure we can sort something out,' she said, already walking towards the door.

'Who dressed me in this?' Hermione asked suddenly, pointing to the flannel pyjamas she was wearing.

'Iona and I did,' said the girl, with some measure of reproach, her hand already on the door handle.

'Your name is Eva, isn't it?' Hermione called out. The girl stopped and looked back at her.

'You can tell me,' said Hermione, fixing her with her gaze. 'I'm one of you now, aren't I?'

The girl continued to scrutinise her. A strange sensation flitted through Hermione's head, as if something was moving behind her eyes. It darted left and right for a few moments, then vanished.

'Yes,' she said simply. Then she was gone from the room.

A few minutes later Eva returned, carrying a large plastic bag.

'These belonged to Rachel,' she said, dropping the bag on the floor. 'You can have them.'

'Was this her room as well?' asked Hermione. Eva shot her a mocking smile.

She tried again to put her feet down on the floorboards. This time they didn't give way, and she was able to drag herself into a standing position, albeit propped against the bed. Eva watched her, motionless.

'If you want to wash, I'm to show you the way.'

Her flesh felt cold and dry, almost desiccated. It felt like it would crack and burst if water was poured on it. But she had to try.

'I'm allowed out of this room, am I?'

'It's not a cell,' Eva replied. 'You're not a prisoner here.'

_Am I not?_

'No, I'm one of you,' she said, her reply neither a question nor a statement of fact.

'Can you walk?'

'I don't know.'

She gathered what passed for her remaining strength and pushed off from the bed. At first, she could only half-shuffle forwards, but then with faltering steps, she began to walk towards Eva. The dark-haired girl watched her unsympathetically.

'It's this way,' she said, turning to face the door as Hermione drew alongside her. Hermione picked up the bag of clothes and followed slowly after her, half-dragging the bag behind her.

The landing was just as dreary and dilapidated. In any case, she supposed that comfortable surroundings would have been inappropriate. Then again, she had no desire to be in comfortable surroundings. The idea was almost repulsive.

She tried to listen out for some other sounds over the creaking of the floorboards under a dirty carpet that might once have been some shade of pink. She thought she could make out an undertone of distant voices, coming from downstairs, but even that seemed to disappear after a few moments.

The bathroom had bare, scratched floorboards and the yellowed wash basin had a crack in it. _Nice place for a shower_, she thought, looking at the weary looking bathtub and rusty shower attachment. The effect was completed by a plastic shower curtain that seemed to have some kind of floral pattern on it.

'It looks worse than it is,' remarked Eva.

'Through the circle it all looks drearier I suppose?' Hermione said in reply. 'In reality the bathroom's all gleaming and new.'

Eva said nothing.

'Don't be too long,' she said eventually. 'She wants to see you.'

She glanced again at the bathtub then back at Eva.

'I don't think I'll be having a long bath in here.'

Eva smirked at her, then left.

She stood in the bathtub, the ludicrously garish shower curtain the only protection between herself and the unlocked door. The room was cold and damp, but the water that gushed from the rusty showerhead was surprisingly hot. She allowed the water to pound against her arm, as if it would wash something away if she insisted long enough.

She had already been through the bag of clothes before stepping into the shower. The charcoal grey hooded sweater and jeans she had picked out seemed to fit her fairly well. Once she was dressed she went warily up to the old mirror that hung above the washbasin.

_Just about alive_, was her response to the reflection, _but definitely Hermione Granger_.

The landing was silent and empty. There was no one waiting for her in the room she had been kept in either, so she made her way cautiously down the stairs.

When she reached the ground floor she recognised where she was for the first time. She passed through the empty kitchen and headed down the stone staircase into the basement. Still no sound other than her own footsteps reached her as she went down the steps.

They were waiting for her in the stone-walled room under the kitchen. The six of them. Every seat at the table was taken but one. She knew what she had to do. No word was said as she approached the table and slowly sat down at the empty seat, but all eyes were upon her. Some seemed to express something that looked like warmth, others a cool disdain, others plain curiosity. All were eclipsed by Lillian's unnaturally green eyes, silently guiding her to her place. Once she was in her seat, she looked round the table: young faces, as young as her, pale and serious, like hers; faces that had taunted and challenged her, taken her blood and shown her the seven gates that now seemed an irrelevance. As she looked at them, they named themselves, or allowed their names to be revealed. _Iona, Eva, Karl, Hraefn, Justin_. _Presumably I'm sitting in what was Rachel's place._ Iona Deasy smiled vaguely at Hermione, but it was a tired, harassed smile. Justin Pole, the friend of Rachel and the missing Caleb Priestley, had a fiercely absent look, as if he was somehow still with his lost friends. Theirs were the friendliest looks that greeted her. Eva looked at Hermione with a look of cool indifference, while the bald, dome-headed man who went by the name of Hraefn eyed her with haughty scorn. The last face to look at her seemed the coldest of them all. _So his name's Karl_. His was the handsomest face, serious and intense behind black-rimmed glasses, his blonde hair cropped closer than when he had shown her two gates. She wanted to look away, but her gaze lingered on him, just a little bit longer than it should have.

She laid her thin hands on the table and looked back at all of them, her eyes too dark to allow even a chink of emotion to escape them. What was the expression on Lillian Herrick's face? For a moment she struggled to name it. Finally the answer came to her. The expression was one of pride. It was an expression Hermione had seen many times in her life, one that she had always sought, at the ordinary primary school she had attended before she knew she was a witch, at Hogwarts, and afterwards at the Ministry. The face seemed sympathetic, kind almost. And free of any magical adornment. She looked about 40, Hermione thought. Her dark hair, which she was wearing tied back in a high ponytail, was flecked with grey, framing her face, which was free of make-up. She wore a red V-neck sweater with a small silver medallion on a chain hung against her chest. The motif on the medallion was hard to make out, but it had a curving, almost Celtic design. _So normal_. Almost as if Lillian had invited a group of friends to her house for a suburban dinner party.

Still silent, Lillian Herrick reached out her hand and clasped Hermione's where it lay limply on the table. She pressed the flesh with warm fingers and stroked the hand. Hermione made no effort to resist.

'So you've brought us your little pet at last,' said Karl, interrupting. _Why is he so full of hatred?_ For an instant she wanted to return his gaze, but instead she preferred to keep looking at Lillian. Her eyes were having a vaguely tranquilising effect on her. _Apparently she's going to protect me._ The thought seemed insane but she clung to it all the same.

'What are we supposed to do with her?', Karl continued in the same mocking voice. 'Do you suppose she'll behave herself?'

'She will speak for herself,' Lillian replied. She let go of Hermione's hand but continued to smile at her. It was not a smile of victory, or a mocking sneer. It looked more like a smile of encouragement. Hermione turned to look at the others.

'I'll behave myself,' she said in a low, even voice.

'You won't have much choice,' Karl replied. 'You'll soon see what happens if you don't.'

'I don't intend to defy you,' Hermione replied in the same calm tone. 'I have nowhere to run. You've defeated me. I submit to you.'

A flicker of a smile shot across Karl's lips.

'I'd be careful about saying something like that,' said Eva. 'Some of us might want to see just what you mean by submission.'

'We know what she means,' replied Karl. 'We're all inside the circle here.'

'I have nothing to hide,' said Hermione coolly. 'But I suppose you know that.'

'What's so special about her anyway?' said the dome-headed man. 'She doesn't look like much to me.'

'Have you forgotten that she learnt it all without any help?' said Iona, speaking up for the first time. 'Who else has done that?' A protective sort of feeling towards Iona began to spring up in Hermione, but she thought it better to suppress it. _Along with any other sign of emotion_. She glanced over at Lillian. Her face was impassive, her gaze almost distant. Apparently she had no intention of intervening or exerting her authority. Hermione wondered what she would intervene in a dispute between her followers. She slouched back in her chair, a vague lethargy washing over her.

'Lillian,' she began in a languid voice. 'I have a question. What is it that we do here?'

For a moment, the look on Lillian Herrick's face seemed like one of surprise.

'That's a good question,' she replied brightly, leaning forward and spreading her arms slightly wider on the table. 'As you know, we already achieved the purpose this little society was created for.'

'Yes,' replied Hermione drily. 'Since you've been very successful maybe it's time to disband it.'

'Oh, that would be a shame,' replied Lillian. 'No, we've got something much more interesting and useful to do. You'll like it, Hermione.'

'What's that?'

'Having put Mr Morley exactly where he wants to be, I think it's time he was knocked back down.'

Hermione glanced at the other faces around the table. There was no sign of any response from any of them.

'So you see, Hermione, you've joined us just at the right time. You will be able to stick the knife in Mr Morley and grind him into the dust. You'll like that, won't you?'

Hermione stuck to her resolve to empty her thoughts of anything like an emotion. She looked back at Lillian without blinking, her mind blankly registering the information.

'How will I do that?' she asked in as numb a voice as she could manage.

'Oh, I'm still working on the details,' Lillian replied, resuming her usual sing-song tone.

'She has no intention of doing what you tell her,' said Karl suddenly, addressing Lillian. _Had he read her thoughts?_ She didn't think she had allowed herself to have any.

'She has no intention of fighting her _worst enemy_?' Lillian replied, looking archly at Karl. She turned slowly and glanced in Hermione's direction.

'Do you intend to fight your worst enemy, Hermione?' she asked, her eyes glinting.

'Oh yes,' Hermione replied, without any hesitation.

For a few moments there was complete silence.

'Well, do let us know when you've decided what it is you want her to do,' said Karl. His gaze was fixed on Lillian, but Hermione felt as if it was her that he was looking at.

Suddenly she remembered Eve and Mike-os. Her heart began to beat much faster. _How was it I forgot them?_ She saw them standing in the flat, being interrogated by Chloe Goodwin. Her cheeks seemed to burn in shame at forgetting them, at doing nothing to rescue them. She glanced back at Karl. There was a look of satisfaction on his face.

_Shall I tell you what happened to them? _He seemed to ask her. _It was messy_.

In her mind she saw a wand being drawn by a pale hand, the bearer unseen. It was pointed at a hooded prisoner. The curse was spoken, the prisoner flinched and groaned in pain, and a bloody stain bloomed on an already blood-stained t-shirt.

She looked at the other faces around the table. Were they watching the same spectacle?

_There's no use for compassion here_, came his voice again. _You're just as much the do-gooder as you ever were_. _So much for you being one of us_.

But she was in control of herself again. The sensation of heat faded from her cheeks. She directed her reply to all of them, most of all to Lillian, who sat quietly, following the exchange.

_Yes, I feel guilt. It's thanks to me that two innocent people were taken by witch-hunters, goodness knows what's happened to them. But I can't help them. I forgot about them for days, or weeks, I don't even know what day or even what month we're in. They're probably long since dead and cold in the ground. But the guilt is raw. It's excruciating. And it makes me strong, here in the circle._

She showed them two bodies wrapped in bloodied sheets, lying in the back of a van. A gloved hand reached over one of the bodies and pulled the sheet aside slightly. She showed them Eve's face, the skin grey, bruising around the mouth, the eyes closed. Then the face was covered up again. She showed them a muddy corner of a field, where the earth had recently been dug up and then roughly filled in again.

_Here are their unmarked graves. Do they please you?_

She looked defiantly at the six faces around her. They had all seen it, she had made them. Karl Flett was cold and distant once again. She looked last of all at Lillian Herrick. She seemed to nod in approval, though there was no amusement, no expression of pleasure.


	64. The penitence of Lillian Herrick - Ch 17

17\. Wands diverge

'So are we fugitives now?' asked Imogen. She glanced around the company, her eyes bright in the dark and hands shivering. For a moment no one answered. The eyes that looked back at her were edgy and disorientated, the faces flushed.

Hidden by the trees, their breath steaming in the cold night air, the wizards looked at each other, then at the muggles, then back at each other again. Moonlight filtered through the branches. They used no other light.

The clearing they were standing in was down the end of a dirt track, an obscure turning off a country lane an unknown number of miles outside Unham. It seemed remote enough for everyone to get out and decide what to do next.

'I don't know that we're fugitives exactly,' replied Caius. 'I didn't see any CCTV inside that warehouse.'

'That's good,' said Imogen. 'Because you didn't do that spell you said you were going to do to change my appearance.'

'Oh yeah. Sorry,' said Caius, a rueful look on his face.

'To be honest I don't think we gave them a chance to get a good look at us,' remarked Meredith Dulse.

'So you'll probably be able to go back to work then,' said Caius, trying to offer her a grin of encouragement.

'Unlike some of us,' said Argenta in a slightly less encouraging tone.

The company was made up of three, or four, groups. The Coven of the White Tooth all stood together, Leah Petrini in amongst them. Ron stood with the wizards who had come with him from Lightfoot House, apart from Argenta, who had reunited herself with Isaac Edwards. Imogen Sontley and the two muggles rescued from the witch-hunters were standing together in a little bunch. Only the strange girl who had arrived with Isaac Edwards stood a little way back from the circle, looking on impassively.

'Do you think they followed us?' Imogen continued. She wondered why it was that she was the one doing most of the talking. _Perhaps I should keep quiet_. But this was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to her, she had to admit.

The country roads they had tried to lose themselves on had been almost empty, but there had been a lot of looking back to see whether they were being followed. Theoretically, if they used no magic, they were untraceable again.

'I didn't see anyone behind us, but they'll be out there, no doubt,' said Isaac Edwards. 'We can't stay here long.'

'Well, where are we going to go?'

There was no single answer to Imogen's question. Within a few minutes, the different camps had each set out their preferred option to the gathering. Malfoy and Carmody were both in favour of heading back to Lightfoot House; Ron didn't want to go back.

'We came here to find Hermione. And _you_ said,' he said, wheeling round to address Rachel Thirlwell, 'that this Lillian Herrick's got her. I suppose you know where we can find her now.'

'Sure, I know where you can find her,' Rachel replied, seemingly quite amused. 'But do you think you can just head over there and ask Lillian to hand Hermione over?'

'Well of course not,' Ron replied tetchily.

'Or do you think you can make them release her?

'You think it can't be done?' said Ron.

'Not a chance,' was the reply. 'You only go there with an invitation, believe me.'

Ron scowled at the girl, who was really starting to annoy him.

'They would see us coming a mile off,' explained Isaac Edwards. 'Even if we could reach the place, we would either find nothing, or a trap.'

'You needn't worry about her anyway,' continued Rachel in a breezy tone. 'Hermione is as safe as anyone could possibly be where she is right now.'

'Is that right?' said Ron.

'Absolutely. She's Lillian's protégée.'

'No she isn't,' said Ron. 'She's Hermione's biggest enemy.'

'She's Hermione's biggest fan,' came the reply. 'She won't let anyone touch her.'

'This is all very well,' said Argenta, interrupting, 'but if we have no way of doing anything to help Hermione right now, shouldn't we be deciding what we are going to do, before somebody finds us here?'

Ron was at a loss about where to go. He still didn't want to go back to Lightfoot House, but he didn't want to go anywhere with Caius Hanmer and his little band of wizards, or with Isaac Edwards and the annoying girl who seemed to have become his sidekick. When Tobias Destrument suggested striking out for the Rhinns, where magic could be practised, this seemed like the least worst option. Even Tobias Destrument was starting to grow on him a bit.

Imogen had come with Caius's coven, and seemed eager to stick with them. Despite some rather bemused looks, it was agreed that the coven would continue to have her and Leah Petrini under their protection. The two muggle prisoners seemed subdued and intimidated and didn't know whom to gravitate towards. The conclusion of the gathering was that they should be taken to Lightfoot House. In the end, Argenta seemed to appoint herself as their protector and promised to escort them there. After that, she planned to meet up with Isaac Edwards. As a result, the car that had come from Lightfoot House went back with the two muggles in place of Ron and Tobias, who instead found themselves the recipients of a lift from Isaac Edwards. The arrangement was that he would drop them by some circuitous route at a train station, from where they were free to head north.

* * *

Isaac Edwards had promised them a 'circuitous route', and from where Ron was sitting in the backseat of his car, the route certainly seemed to be living up to its billing. They had already spent several hours winding their way around country lanes, seemingly never reaching anything like a destination. It was now late at night and Ron had lost track of how many times he had drifted in and out of sleep. Rubbing his eyes and squinting around the inside of the car and out at the hedges rushing by, he resisted the temptation to ask 'is it far now?' Judging from his hunched over position, Tobias Destrument was asleep in the passenger seat, alongside Isaac Edwards, whose eyes were impassively fixed on the road ahead and on the route he presumably had in his head. Ron glanced across at the other passenger on the back seat. Unfortunately, Rachel Thirlwell was not asleep. She returned his bleary-eyed look with a bright smirk, indicating that she hadn't been asleep too recently.

'Any idea where we are?' Ron mumbled in her direction.

'No,' came the reply.

'I decided it was best to keep driving until we get nearer the time when the trains start running,' came Edwards' voice from the front seat. 'That way the two of you don't have to hang around in the cold waiting for the first train. _We_ have plenty of time on our hands.'

From Edwards' cheerless tone of voice, it didn't sound as if much fun was going to be had during all that free time.

'Thanks for that,' muttered Ron. He slouched back into his seat and closed his eyes. At least he had some room to stretch in that car, and no longer had Draco Malfoy breathing in his ear and poking him in the ribs. Sensing that someone was watching him, he opened his eyes again. Rachel's gaze was half-amused, half-critical. Ron surmised that this was the result of her having some inside information on Hermione. He tried to work out where he had seen her before. As they sat in silence the smirk on her face seemed to grow wider, as if she was watching him try to puzzle out her identity. At last he managed to place her: she was the girl who had been sitting next to Hermione in Muirton Tower, although she looked somewhat healthier than she had done that night. He remembered wondering who that girl had been. Most of the time she had seemed to be asleep or lying in a kind of daze, but from time to time he had seen her speaking to Hermione, and Hermione listening to her intently. The girl had left the tower with Hermione as well. Ron hadn't given it any thought at the time, because Hermione had also left with Demelza Robins and some other girl from Hogwarts. _What has she been whispering in Hermione's ear?_

'You were in Muirton Tower the night the Ministry rose,' he said to her across the back seat.

'That's right,' she replied, apparently unimpressed.

'Tell me, why is it we should believe you when you say you know where Hermione is?' he asked.

'Once you've stepped inside the Circle,' she replied in a low voice, 'you never really leave it. Hermione's inside it, Lillian's inside it, and so are all the others.'

_Hermione's inside it_. The words sounded ominous.

'You mean that she's one of them?'

'I can't see that far. But don't worry, I don't think that's very likely.'

'You seem to think you know a lot about her,' Ron remarked, in a tone that came out angrier than he intended. In reply, Rachel smiled coolly and said nothing. Ron took the hint, and it annoyed him even more. They looked at each other in silence for a few moments. Then suddenly he heard her voice again, only this time it was right inside his head.

_I can find out all sorts of things from looking inside people's minds_, she said, in a voice that was far from friendly. _But with Hermione I didn't need to do that. I know what she's been through — I've been to the same places. We've walked under the red sky, if you know what that means. But you don't need to use the Seven-Pointed Circle to see how she's hurting: you only have to look at her face._

_You think she was justified in how she treated me, do you?_ he replied, not sure if he was speaking out loud or in his head. _Since she doesn't, what does it matter what I think?_ Noting the smirk on her face, he judged the conversation closed, and no further word passed between them for the rest of the journey. Ron either slept or feigned sleep, or exchanged the odd fragment of small talk with Tobias Destrument or Isaac Edwards. When he got out of the car he nodded to Rachel curtly and slammed the door.

Isaac Edwards' car was parked down a slip road that ran along the side of a railway cutting. The station was above them, its platforms lit up in the dark, damp morning. It was a little before six.

'Good luck,' said Edwards, as he leaned slightly out of the car window. 'Have fun using magic.' Even though he spoke the words in a low voice, they seemed to echo around the place where they were standing. Ron shivered slightly and glanced up at the silent platforms above them. Tobias Destrument shook hands with Edwards, then he and Ron made their way up to the northbound platform. The gate was unlocked and there was no one waiting for a train. The first challenge was to get tickets out of the ticket machine. They pressed various buttons, not quite in agreement on how best to proceed or even where they were going. They knew they needed to make for Stranraer, and found it easily enough in the system, but what was less clear was how they were going to get there.

'We have to change trains, and probably more than once,' said Tobias, who had obviously done some research on how to get to the Rhinns. 'It's almost worth going to Glasgow and then back out again.'

'That sounds far,' Ron remarked, although his sense of the relative positions of Glasgow and Stranraer was shaky to say the least. However, years of travelling north on the Hogwarts Express had made Glasgow synonymous with being really quite far north. He could remember Hermione saying things like '_Really, Ron, we're nearly in Glasgow by now_', or '_We'll be past Glasgow by the time you finish that_', and pointing tersely out of the window.

'We'll go as far as Carlisle,' Tobias began, 'then go from there to Dumfries. I reckon we may be able to get a train from there to Stranraer.'

This was as good a plan as any.

About fifteen minutes later a train pulled into the platform. They were glad to get inside. The first thing Ron did upon sitting down was to pull on a pair of gloves to hide his mangled finger, as it occurred to him that this might be a clue to his identity. After a very poor night's sleep, the first part of the journey was spent asleep, slumped over their seats, waking up only when a ticket inspector passed through the carriage checking tickets. When hunger woke them, Ron offered to try and find out if there was any food for sale on the train. He returned with a sausage roll, a ham and cheese sandwich, two cups of hot tea and a chocolate bar.

Over breakfast, Ron scrutinised his travelling companion. It seemed ludicrous that an Auror should be travelling in a muggle train with someone who, to all intents and purposes, was a dark wizard. But then again, as Tobias Destrument didn't look much like one of the leading members of a dangerous wizarding organisation as he sat on his seat eating half a sausage roll, his trousers littered with crumbs and his eyes bleary from lack of sleep.

'By the way,' said Ron, trying to speak as quietly as possible while still being audible, 'what happened to Lashburn? Did you leave him behind in Az… you know where?'

Tobias looked up from his sausage roll.

'We parted ways after we left… that place,' he replied with a shudder. 'He didn't want anything to do with the Tourniers. He's continuing to pursue a harder line. I don't think it'll get him far.'

Ron leaned a little closer.

'Was he really trying to… you know what?'

Tobias smiled grimly.

'No. Or at least that wasn't the mission he was given. Your friend worked it out on Threshold Island, from what I heard.'

So Harry was right. The memory of Threshold Island flashed through Ron's mind. It already seemed terribly remote in time. When will he wake up? Will he ever wake up?

Having finished breakfast, Tobias whipped out his mobile phone.

'Who are you ringing?' said Ron, half a sandwich still in his mouth.

'My sister,' Tobias replied.

'Isn't it a bit early for that?' said Ron, acknowledging to himself that he would also need to contact his family very soon. _The car that was heading back to Lightfoot House must have made it back there by now_.

'Oh no, that won't be a problem,' said Tobias. And sure enough, his sister soon answered the phone. To Ron's annoyance, the conversation took place in French, leaving him dependent on whatever summary of the conversation Tobias chose to offer him, if any.

'Enid will speak to McAuliffe as soon as he's up. She wanted to tell your family too, but I imagine you'll want to do that yourself.'

'Thanks, I will,' muttered Ron.

'McAuliffe said not to try to enter the Rhinns without him,' Tobias continued. 'Hopefully they'll meet us in Stranraer this evening.'

'_They_?' said Ron.

'Yes. Him and Enid.'

'I see,' Ron remarked witheringly. The prospect of Enid Blackledge made him feel slightly uneasy.

'Maybe they'll travel up with your family, although travelling in large groups isn't advisable', Tobias went on in a business-like tone.

'I'll sort that out, don't you worry,' replied Ron, shooting Tobias a slightly withering look and reaching for his mobile phone. After several attempts, he managed to get through to a rather sleepy-sounding Ginny, who quickly passed him on to his parents, to each of whom in turn he had to give a brief (and deliberately vague) account of the night's events and his current location and travel plans. The overall conclusion was that the rest of the Weasley family were unwilling to go traipsing all the way up to Scotland unless Ron was able to report back to them that it was really worth going. Ron suspected that they were starting to get a little bit used to the comforts of Lightfoot House and wanted to drag it out there for as long as they could.

In return, Ron's father was able to confirm to him that Malfoy, Argenta, Carmody and the two muggles had recently arrived at Lightfoot House. Apparently Argenta Coyle had woken up Mr and Mrs Weasley very early that morning to tell them that Ron was fine and probably on his way to Scotland. Argenta and the others had then all gone straight to bed so there was nothing else to tell.

Ron turned back to Tobias.

'Once we get ourselves set up there, my family might join us,' he said. Tobias nodded stiffly. _He doesn't think much of my family. His family are probably like the Malfoys_.

The train continued northwards, alternating between sprawling housing estates and open countryside. The view from the window of the train grew hillier and wilder, more akin to what Ron used to see from the window of the Hogwarts express. The journeys to and from Hogwarts with Harry and Hermione seemed a terribly long time ago. He pushed the memory away, glancing instead around the carriage of the ordinary muggle train in which he was travelling. He caught Tobias's eye for a moment and shrugged ruefully. Then he remembered that Hogwarts was where the dark wizard wanted to get to eventually.

'Where did you go to school anyway?' he asked suddenly, breaking the silence. Tobias looked quickly around the carriage to see if anyone was within earshot.

'Notre Dame-du-bûcher,' he replied in a clipped but proud tone, once he had satisfied himself that no muggle could hear him. 'Ever heard of it?' he added quickly.

Ron hadn't heard of it. It sounded French. He remembered Hermione telling him that there were dozens of magical schools around the world. It was the sort of thing that she knew.

'Well, it's a small school, in a small country,' Tobias added.

Ron shrugged again.

'Why do you ask?' said Tobias.

'Just curious,' replied Ron. Tobias glanced out of the window.

'Oh yes, I see why you're thinking about your schooldays. Feeling nostalgic?'

'Not particularly,' said Ron. It was true, as well.

'Did your school ever take part in the … tournament?' asked Ron.

'The tri …?' replied Tobias, stopping himself mid-sentence. 'Oh no.'

It was as if taking part in the Triwizard tournament was something quite outrageous. 'It's not that kind of school,' he added.

'What does that mean?' Ron asked.

'Oh, you could never fit something like _that_ into our curriculum,' replied Tobias.

'Beauxbatons and Durmstrang managed it.'

'Oh well, _Beauxbatons_ would,' commented Tobias with an air of contempt. Ron decided not to pursue the subject any further.

'What's it's like, Notre Dame de whatever?' he said. Tobias scowled but didn't bother to repeat the name of his old school.

'It's in an old convent in the middle of a forest in the Ardennes. It started out as a convent in the sixteenth century. Our founder was burned at the stake as a _witch_.'

He said the last word in an undertone.

'Aren't convents for girls?' said Ron.

'There are girls and boys now,' replied Tobias. 'The girls and boys live in separate buildings, looked after by monks or nuns, all members of the Order of Notre Dame-du-bûcher.'

'Doesn't sound like much fun.'

'It's a very serious place. Not some sort of frivolous finishing school like Beauxbatons. Our most important subject is mortification.'

'What's that?' asked Ron.

'Purging the mind and the body of impure thoughts,' came the response.

'By ma … _magic_?' said Ron, lowering his tone to pronounce the word.

'Of course,' said Tobias. 'There are many mortification charms you can use to purify yourself. But you have to believe in it. We spend several hours a week in private study, learning to perfect them.'

'Is that also when you perfected the ideology of the Citadel?' remarked Ron in the same low voice.

Tobias said nothing, but the remark clearly displeased him.

'There's no point asking questions about things you don't understand,' he replied.

Ron was about to retort when a family of muggles entered the carriage and occupied all the empty seats next to Ron and Tobias. They scarcely said another word until they got to Carlisle.

* * *

Imogen Sontley's office seemed much the same as when she had last been there, its scant furniture and decoration seemingly untouched. Just like any other day she had walked up the steps into the AMA building and passed reception to her office, the usual guard waving her through security and Keely in reception saying 'hi' in her little singsong voice. But that morning, when she closed her front door and walked to the tube station, she knew that a wizard was shadowing her, always just out of sight. Occasionally he slipped into her field of view, just so she knew he was there. He had been standing on the platform of the tube station, and had been somewhere in the carriage of the tube train she travelled in. And just as she had reached the entrance to the AMA building, he had let her have one last glimpse of him before she turned to go inside.

'I bet Mr Marchelow will be keeping a close eye on you from now on,' Caius had said to her when the coven had dropped her back at her flat in London. She had shivered at the idea. 'So we'd better keep a close eye on you.'

'I'm sure I'll be fine,' she had tried to insist. 'I don't need protection.'

'We won't be spying on you in your flat or something, if that's what you're worried about,' he had said. His tone was flippant, but he cut a rather awkward presence standing in her living room, dishevelled and slightly ill at ease. _Thank goodness Lorna was out. _What would she have said if she had found her 'entertaining' Caius? _So is this who you were out all night with?_ And '_isn't he a bit young for you_?' when he was out of earshot. Anyway, she decided that she believed him when he said that they would respect her privacy. And on top of that, by acting as her personal protection service, the coven was putting itself at risk of discovery.

The expression on his face as she let him out of the flat was bleak and not very encouraging.

'Caius?' she said, his name reverberating a little around the tiled hallway. She quite liked the idea that she had had a wizard in her flat.

He turned to face her.

'You'll be able to keep out of sight, will you?'

'They won't see us,' he replied.

'And if they do?'

'If they do, well, we can't stay hidden forever.'

He tried to smile, but didn't quite manage it.

'One more thing,' she had said.

'Yes?'

'Thank you.'

With that she had leaned out of her door and given him a quick kiss on the cheek. Then she had gone straight to bed, waking sometime after two in the afternoon.

She had cleared her backlog of emails and made more than half a dozen phone calls checking in with members of staff when Mr Laceby came to see her. She hadn't dared to be seen talking with Sioned, but she had given her a few conscious looks from her desk that seemed to indicate that she had already heard all about the night in the warehouse. Mr Laceby's knock at the door had not by any means been the first of the morning. Keely from reception had put her head round the door to check that Imogen's mission had gone ok, while Monique, an obsequious transferee, had slunk in to check that she was dealing correctly with a bunch of files.

Her chin resting on her raised hand, Imogen gazed slightly upwards at Mr Laceby, scrutinising him for any sign of a change in his behaviour. The acknowledgement that she was in on the secret was there in the look in his eye. His bearing had changed too: he stood straighter, with a nobler, more imposing air.

'I suppose I should still call you Mr Laceby,' she began.

'Yes, you should,' he replied.

'I hope it doesn't bother you that …'

'Oh no. It's in the natural course of things.'

She wondered what the natural course of things were, but said nothing.

'I suppose you know about the …'

'About the additional protection? Yes, very sensible.'

'When did you get back to London?'

'Yesterday morning.'

'Oh, the same as me. I think I understood that you were … visiting your family.'

'That's right.'

'I think I understood that you were expecting some guests, who were due to arrive very late.'

'Yes, I was there to receive them. The new arrivals will be very well looked after.'

'I suppose you heard what happened to …'

'Yes, I heard. At least she's out of any immediate danger.'

'I didn't get to thank you for the other night'

'It was nothing.'

'You obviously managed to …'

'Yes, no problems there.'

'I was meaning to debrief you on the …'

'I've had a chance to catch up on that particular file.'

'I thought you might.'

Imogen paused for a minute. _It's easy to have a conversation when the other person can read your thoughts._ _It's good of him to at least allow me the pretence of asking questions._ Another one occurred to her.

'What happens next?'

His face was graver, and his reply not entirely bureaucratic.

'We sit tight, keep you safe and wait for further policy developments.'

She shivered. The word 'policy' had acquired a sinister connotation.

In a moment of quiet, after Mr Laceby, or Fulke Tournier, had left her office, she crossed the floor to look out of the window. She had told herself that she would make no changes to how she lived her life. The idea that the Safe Magic Campaign would try to harm a member of the Agency for Magical Affairs was ludicrous after all. They would try to undermine her of course, she was certain of that, but they had been trying to do that anyway. Nonetheless, she had opted that morning for a pair of low-heeled boots, just in case she had to run. She opened a crack in the blinds on her office window and looked down into the street below. As expected, the pavements were thronged with pedestrians and the road choked with traffic. But when she looked a little harder at the scene below her, something in her field of view seemed to move slightly but insistently. She thought she knew who it was.

* * *

From his place by the window, Ron looked out onto the street. The shops were closing, and far fewer pedestrians were passing by. He had long since finished his drink, a rather watery orange juice, and was contemplating ordering another just to prolong his stay in the café where he had spent the last two hours. He glanced at the time, which was visible on a digital display mounted above a shop across the road. Half an hour ago Tobias had gone to meet his sister and Daniel McAuliffe at Stranraer railway station. The café and the street outside had a claustrophobic feel and Ron longed to be out of them. He had seen at least two people walk past who had a distinctly wizard-like air about them, but unless they were actually seen arresting someone, there was no way of telling whose side they were on. As he glanced across at the woman behind the café counter, he swore she was giving him a suspicious look. He smiled weakly at her and ordered another orange juice.

Another twenty minutes passed before Tobias entered the shop with his sister and Daniel McAuliffe. They gathered round the table, and the woman came straight over to see if they were planning to order anything. Daniel quickly ordered cups of tea and sandwiches, and the woman's mood seemed to lighten as soon as she was addressed in a local accent.

'We reckon there was a safe wizard at the station, checking who was getting off the train,' said Tobias, speaking half into the collar of his jacket. 'Lucky for us he seemed more interested in checking if anyone suspicious was heading for the ferry. Enid stayed back at the station to keep an eye on him, then we met up a bit later in the town.'

'How could you tell he was a safe wizard?' asked Ron in an equally low voice.

Enid Blackledge shot Ron a sly wink.

'He was a wizard all right, and not a local one,' she remarked.

'I know all the local ones anyway,' added Daniel.

'I saw him reaching into his pocket a few times as he watched the passengers going past.' Enid continued. 'The movement of the hand and the fingers were exactly what a wizard does when he's reaching for his wand. It was a reflex for him — after all he can use his wand whenever he likes, not like a wizard who's in hiding.'

She smiled again, seemingly rather pleased with herself.

'Anyway, we're leaving town in a few minutes,' said Tobias, rather abruptly.

'How are we leaving?' asked Ron.

'On foot,' replied Daniel. 'We walk to the Rhinns.'

As quickly and inconspicuously as possible, the four wizards made their way out of Stranraer, searching out quieter back streets and leaving the town by a minor road that led into the countryside. As a precaution, the route they were following wasn't the most direct one. By the time they left the last buildings behind them it was quite dark. The lights of the country road they were following led away into the distance. The road was flanked by fields, but they passed the occasional house. No one appeared to be in pursuit of them. After some time they turned off the road, following a brook that meandered across the fields. Ron glanced at the faces of Tobias and his sister Enid. They were calm and inscrutable, looking keenly at the route ahead.

'Is this the way to the Rhinns?' asked Ron.

'We're there already,' replied Daniel.

Eventually the brook led them to another country lane. Here they left the brook behind and turned onto a narrower track that led past some farm buildings. They heard dogs barking in the lane and then heavy footsteps approaching from one of the buildings. Daniel went a few steps ahead of them and stopped at a gate. He exchanged a few words there with an unseen man, who seemed to know him. The dogs stopped barking and the four of them carried on their way, passing down a track that led between fields and then out onto rougher moorland. Ahead of them, they could make out traces of woodland in the dark. They drew nearer to the trees and then disappeared under cover.

'Very near now,' muttered Daniel.

_He'd better be trustworthy_. Ron felt rather annoyed that the thought hadn't occurred to him sooner. O_therwise we're a long way from help._

They passed on through the wood, which was small and narrow, and crossed another lane, this one deserted and dark. Now and then, Ron could make out a lake through the trees.

Suddenly they heard a slight rustling very close, somewhere in the undergrowth off to their left. Daniel stopped short and peered into the undergrowth. The next moment a dark figure stepped out onto the path right in front of them, as if out of nowhere. A wand was pointed at them, gripped in the thin, pale fingers of an outstretched hand.


	65. The penitence of Lillian Herrick - Ch 18

18\. The simple manipulation of objects

Hermione's footsteps made no sound as she went down the stairs. The door to the kitchen was open as she passed it, but no voices came from within. Pausing for a moment, she drew breath and continued noiselessly down the hall to the front door. She had no belongings with her, nor any kind of provisions: she had no illusions about escaping. She stopped behind the front door, looking at its gnarled wood and peeling paint, half wondering whether it would open in front of her, as it had once done when she stood on the other side. But nothing happened, so she raised her hand to the door handle, pushed hard and swung the door open.

The air was cool outside, the sky clearer and brighter than she remembered seeing it for some time. She walked around the house, skirting the little puddles of rainwater and islands of churned-up mud that streaked the yard. No one was in sight, and there was no sound but the call of a distant bird. A dirt trail led away from the house and under the fir trees that clustered around it. She hugged herself for a moment as a thin sheet of wind swept over her. Then she stepped onto the path and passed under the trees.

There was no wind under there. The path went diagonally away from the house, but not in the direction she wanted to go. She followed it anyway. A little way in, she found a second path that cut across the path she was on. Of the two paths, this second one seemed the more frequently used and it seemed to point in the direction she wanted to take. For an instant she thought she could hear someone moving in the trees behind her, but she stepped onto the second path anyway. She would be stopped when they wanted to stop her.

The wood soon began to thin out. Stepping out past a final clump of fir trees, she emerged onto a muddy, uneven hill. Below it the sweep of the ground dropped away, before rising again in the middle distance as brown-green moorland dotted with heather. Beyond it stretched further hills, the same landscape repeating over and over. She stopped a few feet from the edge, where a swathe of gorse ran along the contour of the hill. The sky was grey blue with reddish streaks and ragged, scattered clouds. Her eyes scanned the line of hills, searching for a ridge or valley with a familiar form, or a glimpse of sunlight reflecting off a lake. But the hills were nameless and unfamiliar, and what she was looking for lay out of sight, so she readjusted her gaze to the near ground. Off to the left, a faint path was visible cutting over the top of a narrow ridge, and then seeming to run along it until it disappeared out of sight. _The Witches' March_. She felt sure of it.

Suddenly Harry was before her eyes. Harry in his hospital bed. Tubes attached, ashen faced, eyes glassy and staring at nothing. She wondered how much time had passed since she had last crept to his bedside. _What contempt they must hold me in, when they see me using the Circle for this._ She supposed she would be stopped if she tried to flee there now. _But it's no use anyway: he won't let me in._

A tear rolled down her cheek. Quickly she lifted her hand to wipe it away, but when her hand reached her face the tear had gone. She turned around swiftly. Karl Flett was standing just behind her, the tear shimmering on the end of his finger. He stared at the tear for a moment, almost quizzically, before opening his mouth and drinking it up.

'So this is what you sealed the circle with,' he said in an offhand voice, the sunlight reflecting off his glasses as he looked at her. 'I'm surprised it even works at all for you. Such a shame you're not who you thought you were when they brought you here - now that would have been some impressive material.'

She took a step towards him, eyeing him coldly.

'I wonder,' she said, 'is it a prerequisite for membership of the Circle to enjoy sticking your nose into other people's business?'

Karl smiled.

'You think you were discreet when you arrived here? Do you think you could be ignored? You were screaming the whole place down, Hermione, don't you remember?'

It was tempting to believe that he was lying, but she knew he wasn't. There was too much time unaccounted for lying half-conscious in that room.

'You were so open. Open and red raw. How could I have avoided your screams? They spoke to me: they were screams of denial, the howling of a caged animal dashing itself against the bars, a kind of binary hysteria, thrashing about between 'how could I do this?' and 'I couldn't have done this'. A tragic waste of time, in my opinion. But you had moments that were closer to lucidity. When you thought seriously about being the killer you believed you were.'

'You were whispering to me,' she replied, looking at him with undisguised hatred. 'Trying to talk me into it. Telling me to - what were your words - be lucid.'

'You act like I was taking a liberty,' he replied. 'Do you not know - you must know, you're a practitioner after all - how easy it would have been for me to make you for real into what you thought you were in those visions? I showed restraint, Hermione, incredible restraint. You can't imagine how much I wanted you to become that person.'

'So why didn't you?'

'You know very well why. We're not about making people into what they're not. You have to go into the dark with your eyes open. And you can't, or won't.'

For the first time she smiled. But it was a terribly bleak smile.

'A little rummaging around in my thoughts and you think you know me, Karl.'

He smiled in return.

'Oh, I saw plenty when our minds were intimate. Mostly related to Harry Potter of course. What was your little motto again? _If you go, I go?_ Will you though, Hermione? If I head over to his hospital and unplug his tubes, will you really kill yourself just to be with him?'

'If you do, I promise I'll kill you. And I won't make it short and sweet.'

He laughed softly.

'It would almost be worth it then, to make a proper killer out of you. But I'm not going to, even though I'd probably be doing the poor sod a favour. Harry Potter isn't going to wake up. Or if he does, he'll be a useless waste of a life. So you see, you do really have nothing to live for.'

As he spoke the last words of the sentence, the image of Harry motionless and emaciated in his hospital bed was inserted forcefully into her mind. _These are what his last moments will look like_, said Karl's voice in her head. _Will you be there to share them?_ Then the scene was wrenched from her thoughts and replaced with an image of Harry lying in an open coffin, the coffin already placed in the grave. Little handfuls of earth came scattering across him. The next image was of Ginny, dressed in black, standing over his grave in the churchyard in Godric's Hollow of all places. She was the one throwing the handfuls of earth.

_Embrace his death. Then you can be one of us. I might even start to respect you_. _I admit at least you've got potential. _

Hermione smiled.

_I already have._ She seized control of the scene, refashioning it and forcing the image back into Karl's mind. _This is what I see every day._

Harry stood in the rubble of Hogwarts, a distant expression in his eyes, as if he was already far away. She put her arms around him, pressed her head against his, whispered in his ear 'I'll go with you'. He knew that she meant it. All he had to do was take her hand and lead her into the woods.

The wood was silent as they walked through the trees, to the place where he was expected. She squeezed his hand as it held hers. _The last touch of his skin._ They came out into the clearing, and the mocking faces of the Death Eaters were before them. She could feel his hand start to shake. As if he was thinking about letting go. 'Don't say spare her,' she murmured to him, gripping his hand all the more tightly. 'I'm ready.'

'Would someone dispose of the mudblood for me?' said Voldemort in a bored tone. Bellatrix Lestrange raised her wand, a look of undisguised disgust on her face and the words of the killing curse were heard. The air flashed green around her, searing pain burst throughout her body. Then numbness and weightlessness.

The scene was still before her, only now she seemed to be an observer looking down at her own body as it lay in the dirt of the forest floor. Harry was kneeling beside her, his head down, her limp hand in his.

'Enough snivelling over the mudblood!' shouted Voldemort at Harry's back. 'Get up and get on with it!' Slowly Harry let go of her hand and turned to face him. The killing curse was cast and Harry too fell to the ground. The darkness was almost instant. It enveloped everything for a few moments in a kind of mute peace then parted like a veil. Through the opening in the veil she could hear the distant sound of waves. Then came Harry's voice. _Hermione_, he said clearly over the waves. She felt herself start to reach out her hand, as if she could leave the bleak hillside and go to him at last. But the sea fell silent and the clear pale sky over Pendle House was back above her head. Karl Flett was no longer in front of her: she caught a glimpse of him slinking away under the trees.

She turned her back on the trees and looked again over the moorland stretching out beneath her. She willed there to be only water below her, grey waves into the distance, and beyond them an island. But the landscape before her was fixed in place: dank, brown and empty.

'She wants to see you.'

Another voice at her back. The voice was rich and melodic, but timorous and uncertain. She turned slowly.

Justin Pole was standing not far from where Karl had stood, framed by the trees forming a canopy over the path. There was no hostility, no attempt to invade her thoughts. At the same time, there was authority in his words. She nodded and walked towards him. He stepped aside to let her walk past him and pass under the trees. He followed her, his footsteps not far behind hers. The path was too narrow for anything other than walking in single file.

'Have I done something wrong?' she asked.

'Wrong?' he replied, as if he hadn't understood the question. He said no more and they continued for a while in silence before she decided to try again.

'Why does she want to see me?'

'That's not the sort of thing I would know,' he replied. The tone was vague, but there was something in it that made her believe him.

Though still under the trees, they were drawing nearer to the house. At one particular turn of the path she thought she caught a glimpse of it through the undergrowth.

'Karl thinks I'm a fraud,' said Hermione.

'So?' came the reply.

'Do you think I'm a fraud?'

The sound of his footsteps on the path disappeared. She stopped and turned round. He was standing quite still in the middle of the path, a spindly branch half-blocking his way. But the branch seemed not to interest him. From the screwed up expression on his face he seemed deep in thought. For a moment she imagined him sitting across from her in a classroom, struggling to answer the teacher's question.

'You didn't come to us of your own free will,' he said at last. 'If it was up to you, you'd leave.'

'So you think he's right?'

'You have a lot in common with us,' he replied. 'But you still hope for something.'

'Don't you?' asked Hermione.

He seemed to shrug.

'I hope for things that are impossible. You hope for something that's still possible.'

The house was before them again, peeling and wizened beneath the weak sunlight. They paused for a moment at the front door and for the first time he looked directly at her. His dark brown hair was unruly and his beard unkempt, but despite this he looked terribly young to her. His eyes were a pale grey.

'How's Rachel?' he said suddenly.

She looked sadly at him.

'It's impossible to say. It's been a while since I last saw her. '

He seemed to chew over her words. His eyes were scrutinising her again, as if she hadn't answered him at all.

'Yes, I suppose it is,' he replied.

He lingered in silence before her, but seemingly looking at something else.

'You should go in,' he added and she nodded dimly in reply.

No mention had been made of where in the house she would be received, but she knew where to go. At the top of the stairs she took a different route from the one that led to her room, stopping before a door that until then had always remained shut, but which now stood ajar.

The first thing that struck her was the light. Little light seemed to penetrate the house as a whole, leaving every room grey and dull, and making the sparse furnishings seem even more tired and worn, but the room she walked into was pervaded by sombre, golden light, coming not from the windows or a light bulb, but from some other, unseen source. The light was rich and deep and seemed almost alive. She remembered the illumination charm back in the Ministry, which seemed a cheap, shallow projection by comparison. _It must have gone out when the magic failed, that light above the viewing gallery._

The light before her seemed to blend with the dark furnishings of the room, which was lined almost in its entirety by bookshelves of old dark wood stacked with books, files and papers. Lillian Herrick sat behind an old, mahogany desk in a high-backed leather chair. The light seemed to smoulder around her, backlighting her, but illuminating her face at the same time. Her expression was grave and her eyes darker than usual, as if she was mirroring Hermione's.

There was no chair in front of the desk, so Hermione went and stood before it in silence, crossing her arms. Lillian got up stiffly from behind her desk. The pale, vaguely 1930s tea dress she was wearing made her look rather thin and fragile. She took Hermione by the arm and led her to the other side of the room, where two wooden chairs sat in front of a small, unlit chimneypiece. There the room's strange light was weaker and greyer, more like the rest of the rooms in the house. Lillian seemed smaller than Hermione remembered her, and her eyes retained their unfamiliar darkness.

'So here we are, in the flesh,' said Hermione drily.

'Yes, our fragile, tainted flesh,' replied Lillian with a look that was half-smile, half-wince.

'I think I should be thanking you for getting me out of that place,' Hermione said after a brief silence. She intended her words to sound sincere. Lillian nodded stiffly.

'Well, if I put you there, the least I could do is get you out.'

Hermione frowned.

'Was that part of the game then? To reveal my hiding place to Mr Morley? You must have known where I was anyway.'

'You mistake my meaning, Hermione,' Lillian replied. 'I kept you hidden as long as I could, but I'm not omnipotent. I meant that I was the one who set the wheels in motion, and that they were likely to lead to that factory floor, or some other place like it. And that would never do as an ending for you.'

'I see,' said Hermione. 'Well, I still feel grateful, although I probably shouldn't.'

'No, you shouldn't,' Lillian replied gravely.

They looked at each other in silence.

'I appreciated your attempt at coming to terms with the probable death of your friends in Unham,' Lillian continued. 'But you needn't feel so guilty. They were rescued.'

Hermione remained quite still.

'Even so, I forgot them.'

Lillian smiled. By her standards the smile was short-lived.

'Well, you can wallow in the guilt later if you like. You know how good it is for you. Now we have more important things to think about.'

'You have plans for Mr Morley,' said Hermione. Somehow that didn't interest her as much as it ought to.

'Yes Hermione, our little conspiracy.' She spoke the words slowly, seemingly relishing each of them. 'It seems that at last our goals are one.'

The remark seemed to drip with irony, although there was no trace of it in Lillian's voice. Hermione looked back at her and said very deliberately:

'With regard to Mr Morley, they are.'

Lillian seemed satisfied with her reply.

'But you know,' she replied, 'there may be other areas where our goals coincide.'

'Such as?'

'For instance,' said Lillian, her eyes keen and her lips pursed, 'both of us want Harry to wake up.'

_Is she trying to goad me into some kind of emotional reaction?_

'Why would you want that?'

'I want it because you want it. And because you're right to want it.'

'But if Harry wakes up,' Hermione retorted, 'I won't feel so bad about what happened to him. That would weaken me in the Circle, and make me less useful to you.'

She spoke the words with a tired, desiccated precision.

'You think that I don't care about your feelings, Hermione,' Lillian replied. 'You think that I just want to use you. Do you think I'm going to offer you a trade: you give me Mr Morley and I'll deliver you Harry Potter?' Her tone was one of protestation, the words sounding like genuine questions.

'I don't know,' Hermione replied. 'Are you?'

For a moment, Lillian seemed a little impatient. Then her usual serenity was back.

'Sooner or later, Mr Morley will overstep the mark. The more he gets caught up in big-time politics, the more puffed up with his own importance he becomes. He thinks he has the Agency for Magical Affairs on its knees, and the acting Prime Minister in his pocket. At the same time, he's surrounded by all sorts of unpleasant people, doing all sorts of unpleasant things. This is my prediction, Hermione: when he overplays his hand, things will get very messy for him. I'm not asking you to deliver Mr Morley to _me_. I have no use for him. When the time comes, all you'll need to do is deliver him to the authorities.'

Hermione listened in silence.

'Aren't you a little bit concerned,' she replied in a low, hushed voice, 'that _you_ may overplay _your_ hand? Aren't you worried that things will get very messy for _you_?'

Lillian leaned a little closer. For a moment her eyes seemed to burn grey. 'Things will undoubtedly get very messy for me sooner or later,' she replied. Now there was no irony or amusement. 'Things will end badly for me, Hermione, there's no doubt about it. If you were to kill me and take my place, that would be a relatively good end. But you don't want to oblige me. I can understand that. All that I hope is that somehow you will take over from me when I'm finished.'  
She paused.

'How weak of me: I was too scared to say 'When I'm dead'. You see, Hermione, I'm already on my way out.'

Hermione looked closely at her. She thought she could detect some genuine fear.

'What is it you really want from me?' she said after Lillian had finished. 'Why am I of such interest to you?'

Lillian smiled an indulgent smile.

'You're a teacher's dream, Hermione. Like any proud teacher, I want a hand in how you turn out.'

'Well, you've had it,' Hermione replied. 'Here I am. You defeated me and I submit. I don't have the will to look for a way forward for myself, so I may as well do what you tell me.'

Lillian stood up, came over to Hermione then crouched by her side, so that her head was at precisely the same level as Hermione's. She touched Hermione's chin then tilted her head slightly so that she was looking directly into her eyes.

'Despair is a good thing, Hermione, but only if you're able to keep your lucidity. All this talk of defeat and submission is a sign that you're losing focus. You won't last long if you succumb to the wrong kind of despair. And round here you won't even have the luxury of just wasting away. You've already stirred up jealousy. That's no bad thing of course. It's inevitable in fact, particularly as I've made it so clear that you're my choice as successor.'

'I'll fight him if necessary,' replied Hermione coolly, one person in particular in her thoughts. 'I wouldn't let him have the satisfaction of beating me.'

'So much the better,' replied Lillian. 'But since you're at a dead end, I need to set the wheels in motion once again.'

Hermione said nothing. She felt Lillian's eyes shining green again, probing her for a response. After a few moments, Lillian stood up again and returned to her chair. Once she had sat down and fixed her gaze back on Hermione, she spoke again.

'What would you say if I told you that everything could be undone?'

Hermione looked at her quizzically: it was the only response that seemed appropriate.

'What do you mean by everything?'

'I mean you living a life where wizards are still hidden from view, where Mr Morley does something else for a living, where you and I never met, where Harry's not in a coma. A place where you live in peace.'

'Does it perhaps involve stealing someone else's identity?' Hermione asked. 'Because there has to be a catch.'

'It would just be your life, Hermione. There would be no catch, only a choice. To remain there or to come back. There would be no drinking from the waters of the Lethe — you would remember what you left behind, as long as you cared to.'

For a moment Hermione said nothing. She felt her heart beating harder in her chest. _She must be serious. If anyone would be serious about such a thing, it's her_.

'How would this be achieved?'

Lillian smiled.

'All it requires is a little push in one little spot.'

Another moment of silence.

'If you keep talking in riddles,' Hermione replied. 'I may reconsider killing you.'

Lillian smiled for the briefest of moments then continued.

'You know better than everyone what can be achieved within the Circle. You can walk into a person's mind, agree with them that their life isn't worth living, even put the knife in their hand so it's there waiting for them when they wake up. The simple manipulation of objects, inanimate or otherwise. It's the same with time: it's just another space where objects can be moved about and rearranged. Time will reconfigure itself at will if you know how to touch it, and where.'

'You gave me a demonstration once of how you can meddle with time,' Hermione replied. 'But you seem to be talking about something on a rather different scale now.'

'It's just extrapolation, Hermione. Simple as that. You can't touch the big things, of course, where fate is immovable. For example, you and Harry could never be parted: the bond that unites you remains no matter how much disruption there is around it. But a little thing, something where destiny has no vested interest, something where the dice falls a different way every time, that can be moved quite easily, and the consequences are magnified a hundred fold. That's my offer.'

'I see,' said Hermione. There was no point in trying to hide the fact that she was interested. 'But what's in it for you? Why undo all your hard work? Why would you want to lose me?'

'Don't trust in my good will, Hermione, even though I do have your best interests at heart. If you prefer, trust in my desire to be entertained by you and the choices you make.'

Hermione glanced out of the window. Thick clouds had covered the sky, casting the forested hill into shadow. She looked back at Lillian.

'If you can do all this,' she asked, 'why don't you start a new life for yourself? You'd still have the satisfaction of all that you've achieved.'

Lillian smiled rather grimly.

'My fate is one of those things that can't be changed. I've looked into it.'

Hermione nodded solemnly.

'You're talking about some kind of parallel universe,' she said.

'That makes it sound bigger than it is,' replied Lillian. 'It's just another place, a place for you to live in.'

'What if I say no?'

'Stay here, but things won't stay still. Even if I let you walk out of this house, sooner or later you'll end up with blood on your hands. And you know very well that you can't just step out of the Circle.'

Hermione glanced down at her hands, as if the blood was already there.

'No, I can't,' she said.

'And what can you repair, of all that's been ruined? Of all that I've ruined?'

The look on Lillian's face seemed one of genuine remorse. Hermione felt the anger she might otherwise have felt ebb away. _No, I won't get angry. She only removes the barriers. I stepped onto the path._

'I don't know,' she replied. 'I really don't. If Harry were to wake up maybe I would.'

She looked closer at Lillian.

'Can't you wake him? Can't we wake him together?'

Lillian shook her head.

'No, Hermione, I can't. Manipulating time is easy compared to that. He's too close to….'

'To death?' The words leapt from her like a sudden jagged sob.

'To the door,' Lillian replied in a distant voice.

Silence again.

'So what do you choose?' said Lillian quickly, a sharp, keen look returning to her face.

Hermione brushed a long strand of hair away from her cheek.

'It's definitive, is it, if I choose to go?'

'That's the beauty of it,' Lillian replied. 'It's reversible. Send me a sign and we can slot everything back into place, just as it was before. There's one, shall we say, technical condition though: you can only come back after seven minutes, seven hours, seven weeks, and so on.'

'Even seven months, or seven years?'

'Undoubtedly. Followed by seven decades, then seven centuries. But even that would be theoretically possible. Under the red sky you can linger on almost indefinitely.'

'Even after your physical body dies.'

'Just as you say, Hermione.'

Hermione got up and walked across the room. She had sat too long in the chair and her bones ached. She stopped in front of the heavily laden bookcase and scanned a few of the titles of the books at eye level.

'_Issues of translation from old Armenian_', '_Dark astrology by Magister Galbenus_', '_The imagery of the Lord of the Red Hand_', '_The New Testament_', '_A life under the red sky_'.

'Feel free to borrow anything you like,' said Lillian.

Hermione turned to face her.

'Thank you, I might do that.'

They looked at each other in silence.

'When do you want to do this?' Hermione said at last.

There was a flicker of delight in Lillian's eyes.

'Shall we say, in seven days?'

Hermione turned briefly to the shelf, extracted the book entitled '_A life under the red sky_' and tucked it under her arm.

'In that case, I put myself in your hands.'


	66. The penitence of Lillian Herrick - Ch 19

19\. Séance for the living

Late night at Caius's grandmother's house in London's outer suburbs. Five figures sat round the dining room table, eyeing each other warily in rather insufficient light. The door was shut and the curtains were drawn. At the end of the table, nearest the window, sat Rachel Thirlwell, an expression of distant serenity on her face. Isaac Edwards brooded to her right, while Caius Hanmer fidgeted to her left, keen and alert in his role as host of the soiree. Next to Caius sat Argenta Coyle, looking pale and somewhat on edge. The last person round the table was Henoc Lutumba, a recent arrival in England, as dapper and urbane as ever. One chair was empty.

'Will this work?' said Argenta to the gathered company.

'Maybe,' replied Isaac, in a not very reassuring manner. 'Though we're bound to rouse other … members of the household.'

'Not to worry,' remarked Caius cheerily. 'We have Henoc's little friend here to help us.'

He pointed at a smallish, yellowed skull that was sitting in the middle of the tablecloth.

'If you want to wave your wand around, Caius, be my guest,' replied Henoc with a smirk. 'We'll be raided in five minutes. _This_, on the other hand,' he added with a reverent gesture towards the skull, 'is untraceable magic.'

'And it's going to ward off the evil spirits that Hermione's currently living with, is that right?' said Argenta.

'It is,' replied Henoc solemnly. 'I've seen it work.'

'And it will need to,' added Isaac.

'You think Lillian Herrick will do her worst, do you?' said Caius.

'It's not her you have to worry about,' said Rachel, suddenly looking up from contemplation of either the skull or the tablecloth. 'She'll probably only toy with you. There are others who might try to do actual harm.'

'How will we know if we're being attacked by one of _them_?' said Argenta.

'Oh I'll recognise them and let you know,' replied Rachel.

For a few moments there was nothing but silence.

It had been Rachel's idea to try to use the Seven-Pointed Circle to contact Hermione. She had asked Isaac Edwards if we wanted to take part in trying to speak with her. He did, but correctly surmised that he wouldn't be the only one. Within two days, the gathering had grown to five. Argenta quite naturally wanted in on it. Caius offered to provide the venue, and Henoc, who was visiting Caius, had declared himself intrigued. _Should we ask Ron?_ Someone had asked. Ron had gone to Scotland, and even if he could be contacted, there was some concern that Lillian Herrick might reserve some special cruelty for him.

'Are you not worried Lillian or one of the others will try and do something to you?' Isaac asked as he turned to Rachel.

'Well, there are five of us with magical powers, and we're prepared for them,' she replied.

'Six, if we count him,' Henoc remarked, pointing to the skull.

'Lillian Herrick broke the enchantments hiding the Ministry of Magic,' said Argenta quietly.

'She did, but the enchantments were already weakened,' Rachel replied. 'The wizarding world was more vulnerable than it realised. Anyway, we have a secret weapon: Isaac.'

'What do you mean?' asked Henoc.

'Shall we begin?' said Isaac tersely, quickly reaching into his inside pocket. He drew out a small bottle containing a black, viscous liquid.

'You all know what this is, I presume?'

'Oh yes,' said Caius with a quick glance at Henoc.

'Take a good, healthy swig,' Isaac continued. He was the first to drink.

'I suppose you have no need to drink this to enter the Circle,' he said Rachel in a low voice.

'To be honest I was a little curious to see what it's like,' Rachel replied brightly.

She also took a swig and passed the bottle on to Caius. He drank deeply and without hesitation. Argenta eyed the bottle with a look of vague suspicion, but drank anyway. Henoc, like Caius, seemed almost happy to be partaking once again.

'Do you think they're asleep?' asked Caius groggily, as they began to slip under the influence of the Dementico.

'In a way, they never sleep,' was Rachel's ominous reply, the effect of which was magnified by her dilated pupils.

They plunged into darkness, so that they could no longer tell if they were still sitting at the table in Caius's front room or within the walls of Pendle House. Suddenly the lights seemed to come back on, and once again they were looking at each across the table.

'Didn't it …' Henoc began.

'Shh,' Rachel quickly replied. 'Listen.'

They could hear what sounded like footsteps coming down the stairs. Then the door opened behind them gently.

'Don't look round.' Rachel commanded them. They looked at each other as a figure in a long, red cloak and hood sat down at the table with them. When at last they glanced in its direction, they could see that the face was hidden.

'Who are you?' said Rachel, calmly and clearly.

'Hermione,' said the figure, indeed speaking with Hermione's voice.

'Why do you hide your face?' asked Rachel.

'If I show my face they'll know.'

'Is that likely?' said Isaac to Rachel, not taking his eyes off the hooded figure.

'It's possible,' Rachel replied, her gaze also fixed in the same direction.

'Can you prove to us that you are who you say?' said Isaac. His tone was hard.

'I could offer you proof, but I wouldn't recommend that you believe it,' said Hermione, almost sadly. 'Here anything can be faked, and your thoughts and memories can be rummaged through at any moment. Don't trust that I am who I say I am. If you want to say something to me, don't make it anything that can be used against you. Above all, don't tell me about any kind of plan to help me escape. And don't trust what I say, even though I'll speak the truth. I won't say anything against them, or anything that they could use against me.'

'I believe you are who you say you are,' said Rachel gently. 'But someone might start listening, or interfering, at any time.'

'If it happens, it'll be clear to all of us,' Hermione replied. She raised a cloaked arm and gestured at the skull on the table. The hand pointing at the skull was the pale, slender hand of a woman. It could easily be Hermione's.

'Speak quickly, time is short,' she continued.

'I don't ask if you're safe, Hermione,' said Isaac, his tone gentler. 'But are you well?'

'I'm well.'

'Hermione, we were too late in Unham,' said Caius. 'Sorry about that.'

'It's ok. There was no way you could have got there in time. I was rescued anyway.'

'Rescued, do you call it?' said Isaac.

'I can't call it anything else,' Hermione replied in a matter-of-face voice.

'Hermione,' Caius continued, after a brief pause. 'We're trying to find a way to stop the Safe Magic Campaign. That's not confidential information, by the way.'

'Be my guest,' said Hermione. 'The Seven won't try to stop you.'

'What, is Lillian Herrick somehow on our side now?' asked Argenta.

'She's not on Mr Morley's side at least. But don't tell me your plans.'

'Hermione,' said Henoc, cutting in. 'If time is short, I want to tell you something. I know the name of the man whose house we visited that day in Ladymarsh. His name's Doyle Hegarty. He was, or is, an itinerant wizard.'

'I know,' Hermione replied quietly. 'I've met him.'

'You've met him?'

'He came to see me. You don't need to worry about him. But I don't think we should talk about him.'

'Why not?'

'He may help us in some way or another. But he needs to stay in the shadows.'

For a few moments nothing was said.

'Will we see you again?' Caius asked suddenly.

'It's not for me to decide,' said Hermione. 'Not at the moment.'

'Can we use this method to contact you in the future?' he continued.

'I wouldn't if I were you,' said Hermione. 'And anyway … I'm … going away for a while. If you try to reach Hermione, I can't guarantee that it'll be me who answers you.'

'What do you mean, you're going away?' said Caius.

'I can't explain.'

'What about Harry?' Argenta asked suddenly.

The cloaked figure seemed to shiver.

'I'm going to go to him,' came the reply.

'That doesn't sound sensible …' Isaac was beginning to say when the cloaked figure suddenly stiffened and raised her hand.

'From this point on, don't believe anything I say,' she said quickly, then went silent.

'We should leave,' said Rachel suddenly, 'I'll try and get us out.'

'Not so fast, Rachel,' said the cloaked figure, still speaking with Hermione's voice. Rachel looked at her, fear visible in her glazed expression.

'Who are you now?' she asked quietly.

'That's no concern of yours,' said the figure harshly. 'You're not one of us anymore.' It glanced around the assembled company and laughed a hard, echoing laugh. 'You're all so scared. How touching. What do you think we're going to do to you? Have you take turns to kill each other?'

They said nothing in response.

'As easy as it would be to do what we liked with you, you're all too insignificant to make it worth it. But since you've all come here out of your concern for dear Hermione, perhaps you'd like to see how she's getting on.'

Slowly and deliberately, the figure drew back the hood. Even though they knew that the intention was to shock them, they couldn't help drawing breath. Her dark eyes, normally warm and piercing, were cold, glazed and angry and surrounded by dark circles. Her face was deathly pale, and her cheeks and forehead were scattered with fresh scratches and grazes, some still slightly bleeding. Her dry lips were formed into a harsh smile of satisfaction.

'I knew you'd be happy,' said the voice. 'I suppose you're wondering whether you could have prevented this. The answer's no. This was Hermione's destiny, at least once she started down the path of becoming one of us. And it has to be said: she's done better than anyone expected. She has some real resources of ruthlessness in her, that perhaps not even she realised she had.'

'You're not very convincing,' remarked Rachel.

'No?' said the voice. 'You know full well that Hermione was named as Lillian's successor. Isn't that right?'

The others looked questioningly at Rachel.

'It's true,' she replied.

'Don't you think that caused jealousy in some quarters?'

'I can imagine it did,' said Rachel, looking more analytically at the figure.

'And do you think that Hermione should be allowed, unchallenged, to take up her place at Lillian's right-hand, or even supplant her?'

'I doubt it would happen.'

'And so,' said the voice, its cold eyes drilling into Rachel. 'What do you suppose had to happen?'

'Some sort of power struggle, I suppose,' said Rachel, in an off-hand manner.

'And who do you think won?'

'You tell me.'

The cruel mouth smiled and the figure raised its hands out over the table, so everyone present could see them clearly. As they watched, blood began to drip from its palms, splashing down onto the tablecloth.

'Her victory has been anointed in blood,' said the voice. 'She showed no mercy.'

They all looked at the bloody hands, the laughing mouth and the spreading stain on the tablecloth. But as they watched, even as more blood dripped down, the blood on the table started to move, rolling in a narrow trail in the direction of the skull that Henoc had brought with him. When it reached the skull, the blood reared up over its teeth, as if it was drinking it, drinking it all, until the blood stain on the table had vanished completely. The hooded figure contemplated its hands, which were suddenly free of any trace of blood. Then it turned slowly to look at the skull, which seemed to grin back at it, its yellowed teeth smeared with blood.

'Now it's time to go,' said Rachel suddenly.

The lights went out again. But the darkness that engulfed them wasn't still: it seemed to churn and pulsate around them, as if they were enveloped in thick black fog. Snatches of voices seemed to reverberate around them, interspersed with other, unidentifiable noises. Then light started to penetrate the darkness, not from a single large source, but from innumerable tiny sources, like perforations in the black. At this point, the din of indistinct voices fell silent, and a single voice whispered clearly to them. The voice said:

'I hope I see you all again.'

This time they had no doubt that Hermione had spoken. The silence continued for another moment, then they found themselves back at the dining room table.

'Is it over?' asked Caius after they had all looked around to check that everyone was present and looking normal.

'It's over,' replied Rachel, a serious expression on her face.

Caius stood up quickly and backed away from the table, as if to reassure himself that he could. He walked around the table a bit, and peered over at Henoc's skull, which was still sitting on the tablecloth. There was no trace of blood on either the tablecloth or the skull itself.

'Told you it would work,' said Henoc with a wry smile.

Caius nodded then turned to Rachel.

'I think I understand what just happened, but maybe I missed something. Hermione did just speak to us, but she wasn't the only one, right?'

'That's right,' Rachel replied.

'So who was the other one, and what happened to them?'

'I don't know which one of them it was exactly, but I have a fairly good idea.'

'Most likely, the person who just spoke to us is precisely the one who's so jealous of Hermione's arrival amongst them,' remarked Isaac.

'Yes, probably,' replied Rachel.

'But that stuff about Hermione having to kill one of the other members of the coven, that was just intended for our … amusement, wasn't it?' asked Caius.

'Probably,' said Rachel.

'Probably?' Caius looked at her with searching eyes.

'You seemed to agree with what that person was saying,' said Argenta in a quiet voice. She sat motionless at her place at the table, her face white and her normally detached expression replaced by wide-eyed concern.

'Because it's based in truth,' replied Rachel, apparently slightly tired from all the questioning. 'Lillian did talk about Hermione as being a kind of successor to her. Not everyone agrees with her choice, and some of them would like nothing better than to get rid of Hermione.'

'And Lillian won't side with Hermione if one of the coven attacks her?' said Henoc.

'No, she won't,' was all Rachel replied.

'I can't believe that Hermione would kill someone,' said Argenta.

'I don't believe it either,' replied Isaac. 'But she may be brought very close to it.'

'What I feel,' said Rachel, suddenly more awake, 'is that the real Hermione did just speak to us, and that however more trouble she's in, she hasn't gone so far as to kill someone.'

'I agree,' said Isaac.

'Ok, but what do we do about all this?' said Caius. 'She said not to try and rescue her.'

'And she was right to,' replied Rachel. 'There's no way we can. She'll have to rescue herself, or trust in Lillian to look after her somehow. But I have to admit, even if she hasn't had to fight for her survival yet, she may still have to.'

Around the table silence reigned, until it was interrupted by the sound of a car going past.

'Still, what do we do now?' said Caius, in a deflated echo of his previous appeal.

'Do what you've been doing so far,' said Isaac, getting up suddenly and looking around the edge of the curtain into the darkened street. 'Continue the fight.'

'Yes, particularly if it's true what they really intend to do with us wizards,' said Argenta.

'Oh, I reckon it's true all right,' replied Caius.

'In any case,' Argenta replied. 'Hermione told us something very important: Lillian Herrick isn't going to try and stop us.'

* * *

Outside her window an animal was howling, a fox maybe. She didn't think anything much lived in the woods around the house; she had never heard more than the occasional solitary bird. She sat on her bed and stared nervously at the door, as if they would do something so mundane as open it and come in. _I took a risk tonight, letting myself be contacted from outside._ She presumed she had been allowed to get away with it, either the result of the new-found indulgence Lillian was showing her, or just to mess with her friends' minds. The fact that Rachel had been among the gathering had also presumably been too good an opportunity to miss as well.

She entered the Circle, once again seeking the night Harry went into the Forbidden Forest. _It's just a few miles from here that it happened._ For all Karl's bravado about death, there had been something about that scene that seemed to subdue him. But quite apart from that, she had heard Harry calling to her. She had to get back to that place where he had been near, where he had seemed conscious of her presence.

So she walked with Harry under the trees, like she had imagined so many times, took the killing curse, then watched Harry take his. What would have come after that? Harry had told her about his meeting with Dumbledore, but she never allowed herself to form any image of the moment after death, so everything always ended there. This time was no exemption: nothing but the blackness of the end of the scene: no sea, no voice over the waves, no passage to the island. _They know about it; maybe Karl told them, or maybe Karl is doing his best to obstruct me._

She was reluctant to travel to the cliffs that overlooked the sea and Harry's island: Lillian knew the place of course, but it wasn't her she was worried about. And the woods that lay behind the cliffs carried a certain menace of their own. _Those woods are a hunting ground._

A single light pulsed once in the darkness but didn't return. She imagined to herself it was the beam from the lighthouse shining briefly through the fog.

She opened her eyes and the room at Pendle House was before her again. Bleak during the day, it was a place of unease at night. It would be a release to leave that place, even into the unknown. She sat on her bed, still staring at the door. _I daren't sleep._


	67. The penitence of Lillian Herrick - Ch 20

20\. The exit

The light was fading in Lillian's book room. Hermione laid her work down on the table and straightened her back, trying to get rid of the stiffness in her neck. She closed the notebook she had been writing in and put her pen down on top of it. The notebook was very nearly full; since Lillian had given her the key to the room and free access to its contents it was the third notebook she had filled up in the space of six days.

She slid out from behind the writing desk and turned to face the window, from where the light was dwindling more every moment. Floorboards creaking underfoot, she crossed towards the fading light with a confident step. She put her hands on the scuffed wooden sill and leaned her head close to the windowpane, watching as the forested hill that spread out beyond the house grew darker.

She went back quickly to the writing desk, sat down and gently rubbed her eyes. For a moment she seemed to stare into the dimness that lay beyond the desk. Then she turned her head and switched on an electric lamp set up at its far end, the other side of a pile of books. The lamp lit up that part of the room, casting a yellow light over the bookshelves nearest the desk and gleaming in reflection in a mirror on the wall next to them. And in the gleam in the mirror a face was reflected: passive eyes, concentrating on something unseen, dark hair and a dark beard in shadow. She looked into the reflected eyes for a moment, which didn't startle her at all. _Justin's at his post_.

Although nothing had been said, it was clear to her that Justin Pole was serving as a kind of protector for the remainder of her stay at Pendle House. A permanent state of vigilance on her part was necessary not to fall prey to the little messages of ill-will, to the memories twisted out of shape, to the cruel images of her old friends, of her parents, of Harry, designed to lead her to despair. She suspected that Karl was the most active well-wisher, but things had come to a head when one who called himself Hraefn had tried to open the wound on her chest in an attempt to drink her blood. She had held off the attack with help from some of the others. And since then Justin had been her shadow: either self-appointed or acting under instructions from Lillian. She figured that the idea was to keep her sanity intact, at least until the time came for her to step onto Lillian's stage and perform. She had even been allowed to send her parents a message saying that she was ok. Her parents were apparently off-limits to the rest of the Seven, so she had been told. The limits to Lillian's malevolence were becoming more evident.

She took up her pen and reopened the notebook. _All these notes count for nothing. The notebooks will probably end up on the fire once I'm gone._ But it didn't matter. The note-taking was all that was left for her to do: she didn't much want to see the dreary landscape that surrounded Pendle House, or think about the outside world, or see the faces of the other inmates in that place. Some wanted to hurt her, others were indifferent to her, and a few she might have liked to help, but didn't have the strength to reach. And no matter how hard she tried she couldn't reach Harry.

'You remind me of someone,' came his voice out of the gloom.

She turned around abruptly and looked in his direction. He sat bleakly on a chair, staring into space, as if he hadn't said anything.

'Do you mean Rachel?'

'Maybe you remind me a little bit of her too,' he replied after a longish pause.

'Who did you mean then?'

She put down her pen and swivelled her chair round partly to face him.

'My friend Caleb,' he replied.

'In what way?' she asked. The fact that he was even speaking carried a kind of fascination for her.

'The way you look at those books. I used to see him do the same thing. You seem to have the same power of concentration.'

'I'm just passing the time here,' she replied in a sad, offhand way. It was partly true.

'There are other ways of just passing time.'

'I suppose I could just lie in bed and stare at the ceiling.'

He just sort of squinted in reply.

'You want to arm yourself, for when you go to the other place.'

It was the first time anyone had mentioned it to her since Lillian had made her proposal.

'I wouldn't call it arming myself,' she replied. 'Just preparing myself by trying to understand how it works.'

The volume that she had been studying was entitled _Dark Astrology_. It was rambling and obscure and she wasn't sure it was of any genuine help in trying to understand how Lillian's simple manipulation of objects might work, but in it she had found a strange diagram she had thought interesting enough to copy out. At its centre was a circle, apparently depicting the point in time where a particular person was born. Surrounding the circle was a constellation of planets and stars, identified by symbols and aligned according to their position in space at the time of birth. A multitude of red lines seemed to flow into the circle, converging on a point at its centre, then re-emerging from the centre as black lines that diverged in all directions, each at a different angle determined by its angle of entry. The theory propounded in _Dark Astrology_ was that subtle movements of what it called 'the object' would change its position in relation to the constellation, and in so doing, change 'the object's destiny.'

'He wanted to understand everything too,' said Justin.

'And it all ended in disaster, is that what you mean?' asked Hermione.

'He took things to their logical conclusion, as he saw it,' he replied, almost wistfully. 'He couldn't take a step back.'

'And so that's what happened to him, is it? He kept going forward until he was completely lost?'

'Are you going to come back?' he asked. It wasn't clear whether this was a rhetorical question or some kind of expression of genuine concern.

'I … uh … I want to be able to come back. I mean I intend to.'

He gave a vague sort of look, which she interpreted as meaning something like 'good luck, you'll need it'.

'Do you know where he is?' she said suddenly, leaning forward in her chair.

'Yes. The scriptorium.'

'Have you been there?'

'No. I've seen it only from a distance.'

'Rachel went inside. Did you know that? She saw him there.'

'It's between the two of them,' he replied in a distant tone.

For a few moments she said nothing, holding back the question she wanted to ask him. Finally she decided to speak.

'Rachel said that you were there the night Caleb sealed the Circle. You witnessed what happened but were powerless to intervene.'

He looked straight at her. To her surprise, his mind was open. Inside the scene was waiting for her.

She saw before her a large, elegantly furnished living room. A glass coffee table lay smashed in the middle of the carpeted floor. Rachel lay just off to one side of the remains of the coffee table, a small pool of blood spreading around her on the carpet. She lay on her side, her body arched and doubled up, staring at the wall through glazed eyes.

'Where is he?'

She heard Justin's voice, slurred and strangely muffled. The place where Rachel lay came closer, heavy, staggering footsteps accompanying each step forward. Rachel made no reply or any kind of movement. Now he was standing over her, his gaze deliberately avoiding any glance below her neck. His already ragged and erratic heartbeat began to pulse faster.

'Where is he?' the voice was less slurred. He tried to get Rachel to make eye contact with him, a pent-up fury struggling to release itself.

Rachel continued to stare through him, giving no acknowledgement of his presence. For an instant she seemed to see him, then almost immediately her gaze was opaque again.

'He's gone.'

There was a long pause before he spoke again. Rachel's gaze seemed to grope for a distant point.

'Why did he do it?'

His voice was almost a whimper. Rachel closed her eyes.

'Because he loves me.'

* * *

In the first dream of the night Hermione found herself back in her childhood bedroom. It was a time from before she started Hogwarts, when she attended an ordinary school, when her parents didn't know that magic was real or that their daughter was a witch.

She was lying on her bed on a Saturday afternoon, her back propped against the headboard, her knees bent in front of her. She was relaxing for five minutes, having just finished her weekend homework. Her bedroom was starting to transition away from being that of a child. At the end of her bed she had taped to the wall a handwritten copy of her timetable for the final year of primary school, the names of all her subjects, teachers and classrooms written out as neatly as she could manage and underlined in different colours. The timetable simply confirmed what she already knew by heart. Monday morning: PE. Not the nicest start to the week. She sighed silently at the prospect of a PE lesson, wishing it was some other time, any other time really. Then something strange happened: the entry on the timetable for PE on a Monday morning smoothly detached itself from the hand-drawn grid and glided to a different spot later in the week. She was caught by surprise, but not completely, because strange little things like that, like magic in fact, had happened to her before, fairly often too. So she coolly looked around the timetable to see what she would like to move into the place of Monday morning PE, before alighting on History on a Tuesday afternoon. The word History obeyed her, sliding across into the empty space vacated by PE. That was the moment, she remembered, looking with satisfaction at the re-designed timetable, when she first really knew that she had a special talent, and that rather than being afraid of her ability, she was pleased about it.

'_What if someone's watching_?' For a few instants she seemed to be awake, and could almost make out the dim outlines of the room she slept in at Pendle House.

'_No, no one's watching_,' she answered herself, rapidly slipping back into sleep.

Now she was standing outside on a dark night. The irregular upper floors of the Burrow were black against a coal-grey sky, but light was flooding from the kitchen windows. _Of course they're in_, she had thought to herself that night.

They were standing in the lane, just beyond the fence. She looked across at Harry, who was looking intently up at the Burrow. He felt her gaze and turned to face her.

'Ready?' she said, as brightly as she could.

'Ready,' he replied, slightly incoherently.

They stood still for a moment, unsure what to do next. They had been over what they were going to say in agonising detail, even discussing how they would make their entrance. But now it came to it, her mind seemed to be going blank.

'I said I'll go in first, didn't I?' she said.

It took Harry a few moments to react.

'Yes, you did,' he said at last, still squinting at the Burrow. 'But how long should I wait before coming in myself?'

'Um … I'm not sure,' she began to say, realising with annoyance that she had forgotten that detail. She tried first to calculate how long it would take for her to say what she had to say, but gave up almost straight away when she realised she had no idea. 'Err … I'll send you a sign, a … a Patronus!' she continued, as the idea presented itself.

'Ok,' said Harry, seemingly brightening at the idea.

'Well then,' she said, 'I'd better go.'

She put her hand on the gate.

'Hermione,' he said suddenly, his voice clear and resonant in the dark.

She turned around.

'It will always be an act,' he said.

She nodded soberly.

'Yes, always.'

'In other words, from now on we're liars,' he said, a bleak expression on his face. What could she say to that? Except that it was true, and that one lie would inevitably lead to more, until everything seemed like a lie. The sickening feeling that had hit her in that moment was still just as powerful, even at a distance of several years. And what she felt she saw reflected in Harry's expression. She was starting to waver, to contemplate doing something else.

'Well, we'll just have to get on with it,' he said at last. 'The alternative is worse.'

_Harry do you mean that? Would it really be worse?_ That was the thought that had flashed through her mind then. But of course he was right.

'Yes, it has to be this way,' she said in a low voice.

He took a step closer to her. The natural thing to do was already a bad idea. So he stretched out and kissed her on the side of the head, at the same time whispering into her hair.

'We don't need words anyway.'

'No, we don't,' she replied in half a whisper, then turned away and went through the gate.

Her heart sank as she saw again the looks on their faces as she walked through the door into the Burrow that night, and she cringed at the memory of the speech she had delivered to them, the controlled contrition, how she had downplayed everything, coolly answering their questions, making as much eye contact as possible with Ron, and with Ginny especially. She was nearing the end of what she had to say when the Patronus was released. Words were still coming out of her mouth, disconnected from the memory that welled up inside her, giving form and vigour to the Patronus. It sprang from her wand, crept unseen across the kitchen floor and slid out through the crack between the door and the doorframe.

But now, for the first time, she could see something that back then she had no way of seeing. She saw the door to the Burrow from the outside, as the Patronus slipped out into the night air and began to pad down the path, coming towards Harry, who was still standing in the same place, just beyond the gate. The Patronus stopped just in front of him, then reared up on its hind legs, as if it was trying to stretch out to him, before disappearing into the dark. Harry leaned forward sadly, watching as it faded away, then looked up, seemingly contemplating the Burrow one last time before opening the gate himself. _He regretted it_. She had been afforded a glimpse into his thoughts.

_He regretted it_, she said to herself again as she lifted herself off the bed, half-awake and half-asleep, and stepped down onto the floor. It was terribly dark and quiet in the house of Lillian Herrick. She looked down at her hands, which were lit with the glow of a Patronus, only without form. The glow coursed and glimmered, as if it was struggling to free itself from some kind of containment. She opened the door and began to walk effortlessly down the dark corridor like a sleepwalker, her feet hardly touching the bare floorboards.

A line of light was visible under Lillian's door. _She's awake, even at this hour_. Her voice was indistinct, even inside her head. The glow in her hands pushed the door open and she followed it in. Once she was inside, the glow, the tamed Patronus, flew from her hands and seemed to coil itself by Lillian's chair. There she sat, in the small hours, a book on a table by her side, her eyes gleaming, never tired. Her blouse's short sleeves revealed old scars on her arms: some looked like knife wounds, others like burns.

'Rome,' said Lillian, looking up from the glowing Patronus at her feet. 'He was going to ask you to run away with him to Rome. The idea had just occurred to him then. Would you have gone?'

'You know everything about me,' said Hermione in a heavy, almost breathless voice, as if Lillian was choking the life out of her, secret by secret.

'Not everything.'

'Give me something of you,' Hermione said suddenly, in a kind of plea.

Lillian's face was serious.

'You deserve it. Come and sit by me.'

Hermione went to the empty chair and pulled it across the floor until it was next to Lillian's.

'Soon you'll be gone, dear Hermione,' said Lillian as she looked over at her, genuine sadness in her voice. She ran her hand down Hermione's arm. Hermione did nothing to stop her. 'It's terribly ordinary, I warn you.'

Hermione said nothing. She just wanted to see a scrap of the real Lillian.

Suddenly a girl was crying hysterically, her head looking down at her lap. Another girl had her arm around her shoulder, her head pressed against that of her friend, veiling her face. They were sitting on a sofa in an ordinary-looking living room, mugs of tea on the coffee table in front of them.

'Katie, please don't get angry with me but I've got to tell you something.' It was Lillian's voice.

'I've thought about telling you for a while now, but seeing what he's done to you, I can't stay silent. You've got to leave him.'

The concern and the compassion were genuine.

_I must see her face_. And her wish was granted: the Lillian on the sofa, her arm around her friend Katie's shoulder, tears welling up in her eyes, was in perhaps her mid-twenties. Her eyes were still vivid green, but they had a keenness, a sincerity that was almost shocking. _The very expression of goodness._

'In the space of six months, he's changed you completely. He's destroying you. He's sucked away all your self-esteem.'

The outrage in Lillian's voice was palpable.

The girl called Katie looked up. She was fair-skinned and freckled, with undulating ash blonde hair. Her brown eyes were swollen from crying.

'You're right,' she said in a raw, high-pitched voice. 'I know you're right.'

Lillian said nothing, but smiled sympathetically.

_How I loved being right_, a cold, sardonic voice whispered in Hermione's ear.

'He knows he's immature,' Katie went on. 'He's said so himself more than once. He understands that he's got to change.'

'Does he?'

'Well, he admits it sometimes. I think he really does know deep down that he's got a problem.'

Lillian chewed on her lip for a moment.

'You're right, I suspect he does too. The thing is, he's actually sort of impressed with his own mental problems - he thinks they make him seem interesting. But that's only his moments of lucidity. The rest of the time, he spends wallowing in his own sense of self-victimhood. And that usually involves lashing out at those closest to him, you especially. So what are the chances that he actually gets round to changing and treating you right?'

Katie sniffed.

'Yeah, they're not that high.'

Lillian touched her chin and raised her eyes to look into hers. _I've seen her do that since._

'I hate to interfere, I really do,' she said in a soft voice. 'You know I've never spoken to you like this about any of your other boyfriends. But this time I feel like I have to save you.'

Katie smiled a little.

'Oh Lilly, you're right. You've always been such a good friend.'

With those words the scene faded out. Lillian's green eyes were before Hermione again in the dark: mocking, glazed, cruel, lost.

'We'd been friends since we were fourteen,' she said sadly. 'She took my advice and broke off the engagement with her worthless fiancé. Three weeks later he committed suicide.'

Hermione wasn't quite sure if Lillian was laughing silently at the memory, or gasping for air.

'That was all it took,' she said. 'Until then my whole life had been based around two things: doing good and being right.'

Hermione said nothing but nodded bleakly. Lillian went on:

'She never got over it and never really forgave me. But what use would her forgiveness have been? I knew very well what I had done. I was so used to being pleased with myself, so happy to collect compliments from everyone around me. That was all gone in an instant - the very idea of it made me want to choke after that. I just wanted silence. I just wanted oblivion. For an instant it was all agonisingly clear, then it was gone. That I can't show you.'

Her last words were spoken in so low an undertone that Hermione could no longer tell whether Lillian was speaking out loud or directly into her mind. But as she spoke the words, the green light in her eyes seemed to go out entirely for an instant, leaving Hermione staring into dizzying, cavernous tunnels, devoid of all light.

'You didn't need to give up being good,' said Hermione. 'You could have found a way to be right without losing your humility.'

Lillian seemed to laugh.

'Goodness and humility repel one another. It's a fundamental principle: wrongdoing and humility on the one hand, goodness and self-righteousness on the other.'

Their heads were very close, almost touching. Lillian seemed not to be breathing. Hermione moved her head slightly. It was slow to respond, numb and dimly throbbing.

'So because you tried to do good and it went wrong,' she said. 'You decided to do bad in the hope that things would come out right.'

Illuminated by a kind of narrow light that shone on her face, Lillian looked frozen and distant, seemingly locked in another moment altogether.

'That sums it up quite well.'

* * *

Bathed in floodlights, the hospital building loomed out of its grounds, a scattering of windows illuminated across its numerous floors. Hermione walked impassively up the stone steps and pushed open the door. The empty reception areas and echoing corridors seemed to step aside and wave her on as she made her way to her destination.

The lights on the life-support equipment reflected around the walls of the room. Harry's face was pale and drawn and his eyes were closed, but otherwise he looked the same. The despair that welled up inside her could hardly have been stronger, but indivisible from it was a feeling of strength, of infinite possibilities unfurling all around her. At first it made her afraid to touch him, as if with a touch of her hand she could spirit him away and rejuvenate him. _What with? Despair?_ But as she continued to look at his sleeping face, the despair seemed to dissipate. She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek, keeping her lips in place there against his cold skin for a few moments, her hair falling down onto his head and chest. _Sleep, Harry_, she whispered. _I'll be seeing you very soon_.

* * *

When the knock at the door came she said nothing and didn't lift her head from the bed. She had been dreaming she was in a house whose grounds were crawling with wolves and other prowling beasts that howled, fought one another and crashed through the undergrowth.

The person at the door paused for a moment before entering the room. She looked around and saw Justin crossing the floor slowly but purposefully. He had come to get her — it was time. Silently she rose from the bed and followed him out of the room, leaving her notebooks and loose papers scattered on the table. The act was to be committed down in the basement.

The others were all in their seats already. Hermione sat down in the chair allotted to her, glancing around her in spite of herself. No one said a word, no one protested about her being allowed to escape. Perhaps they assumed she would be back in no time. The faces before were impassive, revealing no emotion, neither those who seemed more sympathetic to her, like Iona and Justin, nor those that evidently hated her or wanted to harm her. She looked particularly closely at Karl Flett, who seemed to be chewing his lip, either to keep himself from smiling or scowling. _No one will be allowed to intervene,_ Lilian had told her. _Will you see what I'm doing?_ She had asked. _Not see you as such,_ Lillian had replied. _So you shouldn't feel like you're being watched. But we'll feel your emotions. _One more question had occurred to her to ask. _And if I come back, you'll be waiting for me? _In reply Lillian had smiled rather ruefully. _Yes, all things being equal. _

Everyone was still, waiting for Lillian to begin.

'We all enter the Circle together,' she began in a languid voice. 'It will be clear enough what you have to do.'

No further explanation was given. Silently each of them entered the Circle. Once they were inside, the table still stood before them. At first it looked the same, but after a few moments a small circle of darkness appeared at its centre. Hermione glanced around the table, and saw six other pairs of eyes focused on the dark circle. No instruction was voiced, but straight away it was obvious to her what had to be done. She concentrated on the circle. After a few moments it slowly began to expand until it was more than a foot in diameter. Then the circle began to move across the table towards her. When it reached the table edge, right in front of her, she could see through it, only the space within the circle was murkier and shimmering slightly. She reached out her hand and immediately felt the pull of something within. She resisted the temptation to pull her hand out, instead leaving it there, as if suspended in the current of a swift-flowing river.

'Go,' she heard Lillian's voice in her ear. She leaned over the circle. At once she felt it drag her down, and the table, the basement and Pendle House vanished.

At first a total and utter darkness surrounded her. The only source of light was a dull glow somewhere below her. She looked down and could make out the faint outline of the circle as it had been drawn in the ground, surrounding her in the dark. She moved her foot within the circle, kicking out against it from the inside, trying to break through the line. Beyond the line an immense pressure exerted itself on anything that tried to move against it. Fascinated, she raised her hand, first to her face and then away from her body, until it too came up against the rippling, churning wall that enclosed the circle. Then, as she looked into the distance, she began to make out a tiny white dot that seemed slowly to be approaching her. As it grew nearer and larger, she could see that instead of being monochrome white, other colours and forms pulsed dimly within it. As the opening rose up around her, the vague forms grew larger, and seemed to writhe more violently, but were no more identifiable up close than they had been in the distance. As the opening rose over her head, she could hear muffled sounds, like the whirring of machines or the roar of engines, but at a great distance. Finally the whiteness of the opening became too blinding for her to look into, and she closed her eyes again. The whirring became a din in her eyes, and suddenly she was dragged off her feet, all points of reference lost.


	68. The penitence of Lillian Herrick - Ch 21

21\. Home

A vast expanse of white, covered with indentations and swirling patterns filled Hermione's entire field of vision. Gradually it seemed to retreat, the whirling eddies within it ceasing their rotation. As she grew more awake, she realised that the strange, pitted whiteness was nothing more than an artexed ceiling stretching out above her. She raised her head slightly and found that she was lying on a bed in a lilac-walled bedroom decorated with a variety of photographs, arcane sketches and bookshelves overloaded with books. Glancing to one side, she saw a night stand crammed into the corner of the room, also piled high with books. Although the space was strange to her, the sense of disorientation was less than she had expected. In fact she felt sort of at home. Hearing no sound from outside the bedroom apart from the occasional car passing in the street below, she lay back on the bed and continued to gaze into the vast whiteness of the ceiling. Her stomach began to tingle with curiosity, but she remained lying on the bed in a state of anticipation for a little while longer.

When the feeling became too much she slid off the bed. First she went to the window, lifted the net curtain and looked outside. The window she looked down from was probably on the second floor: below it was a square, ringed with plane trees and lined with early Victorian town houses. The square felt like it should be in London, although she couldn't be sure: she had no way of knowing whether London even existed where she was. A mother was pushing a stroller across the expanse of green in the middle of the square. She looked totally normal, which came as a relief. _What were you expecting? Extra limbs and flying cars?_

As she let go of the net curtain she happened to glance at her hand. In an instant she glanced away, but it was no good: she had seen what was on her ring finger. Instantly she pushed back her sleeve: Harry's bracelet was there around her wrist, as alive as ever. Had she brought it with her, or had he given her the same gift in that place too? She recalled how Lillian had said that many things remained the same, whatever version of events you find yourself in. She looked away from the window, trying to shut her mind to memories that were starting to take form and rush in. _I'm not ready to know everything yet_.

She went quickly to the bookshelf, running her eyes quickly over the titles and to her amazement finding many books from her own collection. Alongside the bookshelf was a wardrobe, with a mirror in one of its doors. She reached out a hand and slid the wardrobe door open, but in such a way that she couldn't see herself in the reflection. As she peered inside she started to feel guilty about looking at someone else's things, but almost straight away it occurred to her that the clothes hanging in the wardrobe were most likely her own. She reached in and pulled out an item of clothing at random: it was a grey jumper with horizontal black stripes, strikingly similar to one she had owned … _where, in your previous life_? On a hunch, she lifted up the sleeve of the jumper: it had worn thin at the wrist, just like hers had done. A quick glance along the rack revealed other tops, trousers, skirts and dresses that had belonged to her, that she had left behind when she ran away. Others she had never owned but would have appealed to her had she ever seen them in a shop. The Hermione who lived in this new place seemed to have the same dress sense, which was a comforting thought.

She could no longer put off looking in the mirror, so she closed the wardrobe door and prepared herself for whatever she was going to find in the glass. The face and the figure visible there were a pleasant surprise: the eyes were bright, without the look of desperate intensity that often intimidated those around her, and the pale, gaunt face she had become so accustomed to seeing was rounder and pinker. Her figure was slightly fuller, or simply healthier. It was hard to look away. _Everything would be undone_: that was what Lillian had told her.

She saw that a photograph had been taped to the mirror. Not looking at it would be impossible. _How much has really been undone_? The picture showed a solitary caravan, apparently parked in the middle of a wide, sloping field. As she looked, the caravan door began to move and she herself stepped down onto the grass, wearing cut-off jeans, sandals and a white summer blouse. The ends of her untied, tousled hair swung slightly in a gentle wind. The Hermione in the photograph shot an ironic scowl in the direction of the photographer then raised her hand, so that it covered her eyes from the camera's perspective. She couldn't help but look at the ring finger. _So I was't married then._ Then Harry Potter stepped through the open door, came up behind her and threw his arm over her shoulder. With his other hand, he raised his middle finger and pointed it with a smirk at the photographer, then kissed her tenderly on the cheek.

Her heart was beating faster, she noted, before diving back into her assessment of the picture. She didn't know how long she had been staring at it when she caught herself reliving the moment it captured. The memory had suddenly come into being. She could smell the sea and even glimpse it over the horizon, and she knew that the field lay only a few hundred yards from the coast. The caravan was parked in the middle of the field, in a patch of grass between rows of wheat. It had just landed there that morning. They had magically adjusted it to give it the power of flight and flown it to the Asturian coast, in tribute to a misunderstood song title, the product of a late night conversation with a CD playing softly in the background. '_You know when I first heard this song I pictured the wrong kind of caravan,_' she had said when the song came on, taking a sip of red wine and languidly reaching her hand along the sofa towards where he was sitting. '_And I only realised years later!_' '_I kind of like the idea_,' he had said, his eyes slightly glazed and mellow from the wine. '_Why don't we …_' They had asked Caius to come with them. She remembered his old-fashioned camera and cackling laugh as he photographed them stepping out into the field. She examined every detail of the memory, apart from one part of it, which for the moment she couldn't bring herself to look into.

There was a noise outside the bedroom door. Her heart began to pound again as she heard a key turning in the front door, followed by the sound of footsteps in the hall. She stood petrified behind the bedroom door, unable to open it. But when she heard the sound of another door being closed, she reached out and opened the door that was sheltering her. She stepped out into an entrance hall, empty and dimly lit due to a lack of natural light. She went silently down the hall, looking at the paintings and drawings on the wall. Even in the dim light, she could make out that some were animated and magical, others still and normal. The door to the kitchen being open, she glanced inside. It was a galley kitchen, with simple wooden units and a long work surface, plus just enough room for a table for two, or three at a push. At the end of the kitchen was a leadlight window, beyond it the windows of someone else's flat. _It would be nice to cook in here. _An unfamiliar feeling began to work on her as she looked around; after a few moments she realised she was feeling houseproud.

There were more sounds of someone moving about behind one of two doors that led off the hall. She realised that she knew which was the living room and which was the spare bedroom. She paused again by the closed door then slowly pushed it open. Her heart was still beating fast, but by now she scarcely noticed it.

Harry was standing in the middle of the living room, stooping slightly to look at something on the wooden coffee table. He turned his head rapidly at the sound of the door opening and smiled, although his eyes looked rather quizzical.

'I thought you were still at the Ministry,' he said, half an apology in his voice.

_Of course, where else would I be_? She felt like laughing out loud. _Maybe I still am_. She was starting to worry about whether there really were two of her in that place, but the sight of Harry awake, alive and normal put the thought out of her mind almost as soon as it occurred to her. No plausible explanation presented itself as to why she was at home. Instead she crossed the living room as quickly as she could and threw her arms around him.

'No, I'm home,' she said softly, half into his ear, half into his dark, unruly hair.

'I'd have called in for you if I'd have known you were finishing so early,' he said, still regretful.

She put her hand on his cheek and tilted his head slightly so that she could examine it more closely.

'It's fine, really,' she said, her voice still barely audible. 'It doesn't matter at all.'

He looked at her archly, conscious that she was scrutinising him rather closely.

'Has something happened?' he said. 'You seem a bit upset.'

_Upset, Harry? You might say so._ It took all her strength to avoid breaking down in tears and pouring out every emotion bound up in her over the last four months.

She breathed deeply then exhaled, her chest contracting in little spasms. Still looking into his face, she took his hand and enclosed it in hers. She ran the tip of one of her fingers over his knuckle until warm metal impeded its path. She looked down, opening her hands as she did so. She took another sharp breath. Now she looked at the memory, just a glimpse, as if she was passing a photograph of it on the mantelpiece. _This is too much. If I don't get a hold of myself I'm going to collapse on the floor._

'You could sort of say that.' She smiled and kissed him lightly on the cheek. 'Let's sit down.'

The sofa was conveniently right behind them. She sunk down onto it in an instant, while he sat down in a more leisurely manner. As she turned to face him he took her hand and enclosed it in his. She moved her hand, pressing it against the metal band.

'Umm … How can I put it?'

_Yes, how on earth can I put it?_ Generally speaking, wizards were better prepared for strange occurrences than most people, but this? She looked again at her wrist. Its calming effect was instantaneous. _Some things stay the same._

'It started with this,' she said in a low voice, still looking at her wrist. Then she realised she hadn't quite meant to say that out loud. Harry looked at her wrist too. For a fleeting moment, his expression darkened.

'No, it ended with it,' he said firmly. Then his smile returned. She smiled in return.

'Yes, I suppose it did.'

A moment of silence followed.

'Harry, I'm not quite myself.'

She wasn't really sure if she was starting on the right track.

'I can see that,' he replied, scrutinising her with a more worried expression.

'I mean, I am myself, this isn't someone impersonating me.'

She ran her hand across her brow.

'Oh God, I'm sounding like a lunatic …'

He stroked her arm. His touch came as a slight shock. Or rather the first instant was a shock; the second was a comfort.

'Tell me whatever you need to,' he said gently. 'Something's upset you. Whatever it is, we'll think of what to do about it.'

She smiled at him. _He's just the same here_.

'Ok, this _is_ going to sound somewhat insane, but I guarantee you it's absolutely true.'

He sort of frowned, but it was a serene sort of frown.

'It's not as if weird things haven't happened to us before.'

'Exactly!' she burst out, relieved at this beginning. 'Such as the incident with the time turner at Hogwarts, for example. You remember that?'

'Of course.'

'Well that's something,' she said. 'Anyway, as you know, it's possible for time to be rearranged, altering certain events in the past and creating new destinies in the present.'

'Uhh … yes.'

'Well … what would you say if I told you that that's exactly what's happened?'

His expression was rather more quizzical.

'I think you'll have to tell me a bit more.'

She took another deep breath.

'Ok… the thing is... until now, the me that's speaking to you was living a different destiny, in a completely different place. I came here via a kind of magic that isn't ours and that you probably haven't heard of, or which may not even exist in this place. I won't try and explain why at the moment, it's too complicated. But the version of me sitting on the sofa with you only just arrived here, brought here by the disruption of an event in our past that has reconfigured the present.'

Harry gave no immediate reply, other than to thoughtfully chew his lower lip.

'I do sound completely insane,' she exclaimed.

'No, no, you don't,' he replied, rubbing her arm again.

'So what do you think?' she asked nervously. 'I realise it's as complicated as it is fantastic.'

'You would never make up something like that,' he said finally.

She reached over and kissed him on the forehead.

'Thank goodness you're you!' she exclaimed, which drew a broad smile from him. She was glad she hadn't even considered pretending that nothing had happened.

'As it happens,' said Harry. 'When I saw you just now a really weird feeling hit me. As if the floor was falling out from under my feet. But not in the normal way when I see you.'

_Oh God I can't respond to that. I can't even deal with it._

'I suppose I understand why now,' he concluded.

Her brain was beginning to resume its normal working.

'Does the name Lillian Herrick mean anything to you?' she said abruptly.

'No, not at all.'

_Are you here somewhere?_ She found herself thinking. _Blissfully unaware of what you've done?_

'She's the one who brought me here.'

'But what for?'

She reflected on what answer to give.

'For entertainment, sort of.' She sighed and put her head in her hands.

'I'm sorry, Harry,' she said. 'There's so much that I need to explain to you. There's so much that's different.'

She paused, and a little tear trickled down her cheek.

'And the Hermione you knew until this moment is gone.'

Harry looked grave. Then he put his arm around her and pulled her head against his.

'You don't seem different,' he said gently. 'You just seem sadder.'

'You know her so well,' she said, with a trace of bitterness in her voice. 'Where I've come from, we're in a lot of trouble, and a lot of it's my fault. The one who brought me here is giving me the opportunity to escape from all that, to undo everything.'

'For her entertainment, you said.'

She nodded.

'Tell me Harry,' she said, swiftly raising her head. 'Is this a good place? Are people happy? Do wizards and muggles live in harmony? Are you and I happy?'

'Since the end of Voldemort,' said Harry, 'things have been fairly quiet, to the point where there's some complacency creeping in … I suppose wizards and muggles live as harmoniously as is possible when one group doesn't know of the other's existence. And as for us, do you really need to ask?'

She looked at him - tried to look at him - the way she would normally in that place. She started to smile.

'No, I don't.'

She had inherited all sorts of memories and feelings and didn't know what to do with them. She shifted round a little on the sofa, pulling a little free of his grasp. _I'm going to have to ask _…

'When did things change for us, Harry?'

He didn't answer immediately.

'You know what I mean, don't you?'

'You mean: when did we start to be more than best friends?'

She nodded, a tiny smile slipping out onto her lips.

'It was at Professor Slughorn's Christmas party,' he said, a broad smile breaking out on his face. 'We went together …'

'… As friends,' she said, finishing his sentence. The memory of the run-up to the party and the state she had been in came rushing back to her. Suddenly she laughed out loud.

'In the place where I come from, I went with McLaggen.'

'McLaggen?' replied Harry in surprise. 'As I remember, he took Elspeth …'

'… Manning,' replied Hermione, suddenly seeing before her a tall, over-confident Gryffindor girl two years below them. The memory seemed to jostle alongside the parallel memory of spending the party trying to avoid McLaggen.

'Of course,' she said, 'I remember her gushing about it in the girls' dormitory after he asked her. In the other place McLaggen was interested in _me_. I invited him to annoy Ron.'

'You going with me annoyed Ron anyway,' replied Harry.

She looked down at the pattern in the throw that covered the sofa. Then she glanced back up at Harry.

'Give me just a minute,' she said gently. 'I want to remember it myself now.'

_Live it for the first time, more like_. The recollections of what had happened in that place superimposed themselves onto her memory of how it had unfolded in the other place. Many details were exactly the same, such as the dress she had worn that night and the suit that Harry was wearing. The party guests were almost all the same, apart from Elspeth Manning being there with McLaggen and Luna Lovegood not being there with Harry. But she was too far in: she wanted to see how he had come to ask her in the first place.

She saw herself walking purposefully in the direction of the quidditch pitch. Not the most likely place for her to be heading, but she had decided that this was the moment. When she had asked around the Gryffindor common room, Demelza had told her that McLaggen had gone out to practise his keeping skills. _Actually the team's heading out for practice in a little while_, Demelza had told her, so there wasn't much time to get the deed done. Although asking McLaggen to Professor Slughorn's party in front of Ron would almost be worth it, even if it would make things even more excruciating than they were already going to be.

In the distance she could see McLaggen's head bobbing up and down, a grimace of concentration on his face as he defended the goal against an unseen adversary. _Horrific. This is going to be horrific._

'Hermione!'

She stopped and turned around. Harry was coming towards her at a brisk pace, quidditch kit on and broomstick in hand.

'I wasn't expecting to see you out this way,' he said as he caught up to her.

'Oh… I… uh… was just going for a walk. To clear my head,' she replied, brushing an unruly lock of hair out of her face.

'Shall we go together as far as the quidditch pitch?' he offered. 'Unless you'd rather be on your own.'

She smiled.

'If anyone else had asked, I'd have probably said no,' she replied. 'But since it's you, I'd love to.'

They walked on together.

'He's still determined to get on to the team, McLaggen,' Harry remarked, gesturing with his broom in the direction of the quidditch pitch, where McLaggen could still be seen practising in goal.

'At the end of the day who says Ron is any better than him?' she replied, as icily as she could. Rather sensibly, Harry said nothing.

'Hermione,' he said suddenly, in a more serious tone that made her stop and turn to him.

'Yes, Harry?'

'I've been meaning to ask you something.'

'Oh ok. What?'

'I was wondering if you wanted to come to Professor Slughorn's party with me. As friends, I mean.'

The proposal triggered a sensation in her that she couldn't quite account for. Part of it was relief at the prospect of being spared an evening with McLaggen. But as for the rest, she wasn't entirely sure. It was amazement more than anything else: she hadn't thought it possible, his thoughts were so obviously directed towards Ginny, and hers were… all over the place.

Harry was still standing in front of her, waiting patiently for her answer.

'Harry, I'm so sorry!' she blurted out.

'Oh, no problem,' Harry replied quickly, before she could continue. 'Who are you going with, if it's not a sensitive question?'

'Oh no, Harry,' she replied, instinctivey reaching out her hand to touch his arm. 'That's not what I meant. I mean I'm sorry I didn't think of it myself. I'm not going with anyone. I'd love to go with you. As friends. Like you said.'

'Great,' said Harry, smiling as he tried to flatten down his hair. They had reached the quidditch pitch. 'Um… so I'm going to start practice now. Before the others get here. Perhaps I'll do old McLaggen a favour and send a few shots his way.'

Hermione smiled and started to pull away.

'I'm sure it'll do him some good.'

The night of the party they met in the Gryffindor common room. He looked effortlessly smart, she thought, catching herself feeling worried that her preparations hadn't been good enough. Almost at once she seemed to hear the whispers in the room. That their going together to the party was instantly a piece of juicy gossip had actually taken her by surprise. Neither Ron nor Ginny were anywhere to be seen.

As they walked out into the corridor, she noticed he was staring at her. 'What is it?' she said, touching her face as if she'd messed up her makeup. 'Are you ok?'

'I'm fine,' he replied after a brief pause. 'I was just thinking about how nice you look.'

She started to reply but realised she had no idea what to say. The words had had an effect on her, _more_ of an effect than she had expected. As if to save her from embarrassment, he put out his arm and she slid hers through it.

Few of those invited to the party counted as friends of theirs, and it very quickly became clear to her that Ginny was assiduously avoiding them. So they skulked in the corner, sipping their drinks and conversing in low, complicitous voices. Their arrival together at the party had received a number of significant looks from other guests, and this treatment continued whenever someone else passed into the vicinity of the corner they had claimed as their own. Harry was in high spirits, witty remarks rolling off his tongue in quick succession, and his good humour was contagious, so they spent much of the early part of the evening sniggering in the corner. A feeling that it was the two of them against the world sprung up as they spoke, and even though it was a little childish, she found the feeling completely seductive.

Once they had tried enough of the various canapés on offer, he had surprised her by asking her to dance.

'I didn't think you danced,' she had replied.

'Ah, well let's say I don't find it quite as terrifying as I used to,' he replied with a grin. 'So what do you think?' he continued, making a little bow.

'Come on then,' she replied, taking his hand as he led her onto the dancefloor.

'When did you get so good at this?' she asked, as they moved swiftly in sync across the dance floor.

'Dance charm,' he replied quickly. 'Sorry about that. If in about ten minutes I suddenly become useless at this again, it's because the charm's worn off.'

'I hope you're not going to turn into a pumpkin at midnight,' she commented, laughter in her eyes.

Charm or otherwise, she began to take real pleasure in the dance, and they continued from song to song, sometimes continuing their banter, but more and more frequently moving in silence. She had no idea how long they had been dancing for, which, she had to admit, was a good sign. As the ballroom swirled around in front of her, out of the corner of her eye she caught sight of a girl pointing at them and whispering something to her partner.

'I was just thinking,' he said, 'I wish I'd taken you to the Yule Ball.'

She frowned a little.

'You wanted to take Cho.'

'I know I did. But now I realise how nice it would have been to take you.'

'Harry,' she replied, a serious look still on her face, 'you and I don't always have to be each other's backup plan whenever there's a social event.'

He stopped dancing, catching hold of her to halt her momentum.

'Hermione,' he said, 'you're not my backup plan.'

At that moment she caught sight of Ginny looking at them. When she passed she could well have been in earshot. Her eyes scanned the rest of the room. Several people were staring at them.

'You ok?' said Harry, noticing her air of distraction.

'I'm fine,' she replied, quickly composing herself. 'I just noticed that loads of people are looking at us.'

'I know,' he said. 'It's pretty funny.'

'I can imagine what kind of success a bit of juicy gossip about Harry Potter is going to have around school.'

'It'd be an honour to be gossiped about over you.'

'Really?'

In response she leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. They paused momentarily and he caught her in his arms. She laughed and the dance went on.

She remembered them walking back to the Gryffindor dormitory after leaving the party. Despite the late hour, Gryffindor common room was surprisingly empty.

'Harry, I have a confession to make,' she said, catching his arm for a moment. 'There were several times this evening when I was about to tell you that you don't have to stay with me all the time, that you can go off and hang out with other people. But I didn't say anything: I wanted to keep you to myself. I'm sorry, that was selfish of me. It was really nice of you to stay with me. To keep my mind off things.'

He looked serious.

'You give me too much credit,' he replied. 'I didn't give it any thought at all. Keeping your mind off things, I mean. And I wasn't thinking about keeping my mind off things either, for that matter. I was just happy in the moment.'

She reached over and kissed him on the cheek.

'So was I,' she said. 'Goodnight, Harry.'

_That was the moment things started to change_, she realised, looking back from her rather skewed perspective.

Despite joking about it, they had no idea of the stir that their appearance together at the party would have. In the few days remaining until the end of term, at least twenty different people asked her about Harry, and wherever she went, she felt people staring at her and whispering about her. Ginny was avoiding her, and Harry informed her a couple of days later that Ron was now avoiding him. When asked about her and Harry, she didn't know quite how to react. It was easy to deny that anything was going on, because there really wasn't. But there were other possible questions that wouldn't be so easy to answer.

'Do you want me to speak to her?' she asked him.

'With Ginny?' he replied, trying to flatten down his hair, a rueful expression on his face. 'She's with Dean. I don't see what you can tell her. Leave it, everyone will have forgotten about this soon enough.'

'I suppose people have been asking you about it too?' she whispered.

'A few.'

'And what did you say?'

'I told them it was none of their business.' She found herself quite satisfied with his response.

'That's what I've been saying too.'

'What about Ron?'

'Ron is nothing to do with me anymore,' she said icily. 'But perhaps you should talk to him.'

'I think I'd better, otherwise it's going to be a long Christmas at the Burrow.'

They had said no more about it, until the next day Harry stopped her in the corridor and drew her aside into an empty classroom. She could see from his expression that the discussion with Ron had not gone well.

'Well, what happened?'

'I'll tell you how the conversation went. It won't take long. He says to me, with a sour look on his face: '_You're a dark horse, how long have you been planning that?'_

I say: '_Planning what?'_

He says: '_Planning to make a move for Hermione. I thought you weren't interested in her.'_

I say: '_Who says I am?'_

Then Ron says: '_Pretty much everyone who was at Slughorn's Christmas do. I didn't believe it myself, but then Ginny comes and asks me: 'how long have Harry and Hermione been an item?' 'They aren't,' I said. 'They must be', she says. 'They were all over each other all night.' So what do you have to say about that?'_

So I say: '_What more can I add? You seem to have all the information you need. Give my regards to Lavender.'_

And he says: '_Give my regards to the Dursleys,'_ and slopes off. So, in other words, it went as well as could be expected.'

She paused to take everything in.

'I take it you're not going to the Burrow for Christmas now,' she said finally.

'No, looks like Christmas with Uncle Vernon after all,' said Harry gloomily.

'Come and stay at my place for Christmas then, just for once,' she said suddenly, the idea out of her mouth before she had time to think about whether it was a good one.

The Christmas holiday they spent together was bitterly cold, too cold to snow, but in her memory they spent as much of it as they could out of doors, walking together on the broad, tree-lined streets around her parents' house, through the parks and green spaces and out into the little scraps of forest and waste land that lay around the edges of the neighbourhood. They spoke little of Hogwarts, of Dumbledore or of Voldemort. Instead they talked about summer and winter holidays past, of the schools they went to before Hogwarts, and even of their beginnings in magic and the strange incidents in childhood that marked them out from the other children around them. But those conversations seemed just as important to her as any they might have had about the task that lay before Harry.

She remembered her mother driving them to the train station to see him off, and how she had sat silently on the way, wondering how the holiday had ended so quickly. She remembered how, while her mother waited in the car, she and Harry had gone into the station to buy his ticket and check when the next train was leaving. Although it was no more than a few days before they would be seeing each other again at Kings Cross, she remembered the air of finality as they waited for his train to arrive.

A cold wind was blowing up the platform. As she looked at him he seemed lost in the cold, his face ashen and his expression fixed on a distant point. She raised her gloved hand, slid it out of the glove and reached out and touched his arm. He looked back at her, but his expression was still grave and she could see his lip trembling slightly.

'I'd almost forgotten,' he began, his voice affected by the shivering. 'What's coming, I mean. What I'm going to have to face. It's been so good staying here with you that I almost forgot. It felt like I was normal, that my time wasn't already appointed for me and drawing near.'

She squeezed tighter, as if she was trying to reach his arm through the thick overcoat he was wearing.

'Don't say I,' she said softly. 'It's we.' He looked at her and tried to smile.

'I don't want anyone else dying for me,' he replied grimly. 'Least of all you.'

'Not dying for you. Dying with you. Willingly. Don't think it would even be a sacrifice. It would just be in the normal order of things. You won't be alone, Harry. I'm going down that road with you.'

He started to speak but she pressed a finger, a finger almost numb with cold, against his mouth and softly said 'shhh', her breath steaming. His lips were warm. She shifted her hand so that it was touching his cheek, which was icy cold. In response he reached out and ran his finger down her cheek.

'It's going to get dark,' he said quietly, and she nodded. Then their lips were pressed against each other and warmth flooded into her.

Once back at Hogwarts, it was if they had taken a step back from one another and were just Harry and Hermione, friends as usual. The general perception, on the other hand, was that they were an item, and since they were always together, no one had any reason to doubt that they were. Every now and then someone would ask her, and then, depending on who was asking, and in what tone of voice, her reply would range from a clipped '_not that I'm aware of_'' to a gentler '_honestly, I don't really know_.' Once, not long before the end of the year, Ginny finally asked Hermione the question she had long been expecting. '_We're not a couple_,' she had told her flatly. Ginny looked at her rather sadly. '_You say that_,' she had said in a small voice, '_but I've never seen two people look more like a couple than you two_.'

As she listened to Ginny she started to blush, the memory of the kiss intruding in her thoughts as she grasped for the right words. But she knew what she had to say.

'_It can't happen now anyway_,' she had said. '_Not before we're free of this … well, you know_.' Ginny nodded. '_So maybe not ever. It depends if we live through this_.' '_But isn't that completely depressing?_' Ginny had asked. '_Why don't you make the most of the moment, especially if you think that's all you have?_'

It was a fair question. The temptation was there too. After a few instants she shook her head.

'_No,_' she had replied. '_This is our life at the moment. We're just doing what has to be done._' But even as she answered, a thought voiced itself: _I want to kiss him once more before the end_.

As she looked up from the sofa at Harry she caught herself blushing.

'Ron and Lavender broke up in the end of course,' she said abruptly.

'Yeah, they did. But things were never the same between you, me and Ron after that.'

Images flashed through her mind, and she began to sense a feeling of dread within her.

'Ron, he didn't come with us to find the Horcruxes, did he?'

'No,' he replied. 'It was just you and me.'

She nodded as she remembered.

'How did we destroy Slytherin's locket?'

'With the Sword of Godric Gryffindor. I took it out of the frozen pond.'

'And the locket didn't try to stop you?'

'You were wearing the locket that night.'

She nodded, shaking her head in disbelief as that memory also came back to her. She could even hear the voice of the Horcrux. It had sung a different tune there. _Hide_, it had said. _Hide yourselves away from this. Go as far as you can. Then you can be together. With no one else to bother you. It will be so easy. He's aching for you, you know that don't you? Call out to him and he'll be in your bed in an instant._ She remembered the insane fantasy. Harry would get her pregnant very soon. And her being pregnant would force them to abandon their quest and find a place to hide to have the baby. They would be cocooned in each other's arms, numb to the world outside. That was the desire that had tormented her through the night as she wore the locket, the night Harry found the sword.

She decided to continue her questioning of Harry, even though the answers were growing clearer and clearer.

'Ron went back to Hogwarts that year?'

Harry nodded.

'He was great. Him, Neville and Ginny led the resistance inside Hogwarts. He even lost a finger to the Carrows.'

She followed the events as they had unfolded in that place. Finally she reached the point she had been dreading for some time. She looked up, a tear in her eye.

'He died at Hogwarts that night, didn't he?'

Harry nodded grimly.

'He even destroyed a Horcrux in the Chamber of Secrets before he …'

'I know.'

'What about Fred?'

'Fred Weasley?'

'He survived, didn't he?'

Harry looked at her strangely.

'Where you come from, Ron lived and Fred died,' he said suddenly.

She nodded.

'And all because McLaggen asked Elspeth Manning to the party. This is really weird,' he said, putting his head in his hands. She reached over and kissed him on the nape of the neck and his hair. He looked up. His face was pale.

'Let me guess: where you come from, it's you and Ron, not you and me.'

She nodded before quickly adding:

'It was for a while. Not anymore.'

'What do I do there?' he asked solemnly.

She shivered. The scale of the entertainment that had been arranged for her was getting clearer.

'Do you want me to answer that?' she said.

He thought for a moment.

'On second thoughts, no, I don't want to know. But on the basis of what you've said so far, I bet I ended up going out with Ginny. I was dead set on her just before the Christmas Party.'

She nodded. Suddenly his expression changed.

'I'm going to feel a little bit strange at this afternoon's events.'

'What do you mean?' she asked.

'Of course! You won't know that we're supposed to be going to Ginny's engagement party this afternoon!'

'Engagement party?' she repeated. 'Who's she … no, wait a minute, it's getting clearer now. Henoc?'

'That's right.'

'How did they ever meet?'

'At the Battle of Hogwarts, there were three Slytherin students who stood up and fought alongside us.'

'Henoc, Caius and Ilaria.'

'That's right.'

'And it's this afternoon, this party?'

'Yep.'

'This is just too insane.'

He took her hand in his.

'If you're up to it, we should probably go.'

'I am.'

'Do you want to see the invitation?'

She nodded. Harry leaned over and rummaged through a pile of papers on his nightstand, before pulling out a card. He handed it to her and she opened it. It read:

_Ginny Weasley and Henoc Lutumba_

_invite you to a 'fête galante'_

_at three o'clock this afternoon_

_on Blizzard Hill_

_to celebrate their engagement_


	69. The penitence of Lillian Herrick - Ch 22

22\. Blizzard Hill

'Blizzard Hill as in the witch hysteria of 1905?' she had asked when he showed her the invitation.

'Henoc's idea of a joke.'

They apparated to a small clearing, surrounded by straggling woods. Blizzard Hill was surprisingly wild and remote for what was little more than an expanse of hilly parkland on the fringe of London. The slopes of a hill rose at a meandering incline above them, covered with dense grass and wildflowers. With the sun warm and cloud cover sparse, the name Blizzard Hill could hardly have seemed less appropriate. They had dressed up for the occasion, Harry wearing a dark frock coat and Hermione a pale chiffon knee-length dress.

She had been looking in the mirror, applying make-up when she saw in the reflection that he'd come into the room. He waited patiently by the door until she had finished with the eyeliner pen and turned to him. His white shirt was open at the collar and his hair was in its customary tousled state. There was a look in his eyes. She understood it, even though she still couldn't quite believe it was real. _The right look from me and he'll be over here._

'I'm probably not supposed to tell you how beautiful you are,' he said very seriously.

She smiled at him, suppressing the words that started to come in reply.

He smiled in return, his fingers gripping the side of the door.

She struggled to piece together the thought that was forming.

'We've been beyond words for so long now, I can hardly remember when it started,' she said finally.

'I can,' he replied quickly. 'It was that night when you said you'd come with me into the forest. Even though there was no way I could have let you come.'

The scene was before her again, but as if in duplicate: the pain at letting him go alone was just as strong there as it was in the other place.

'Since then, I don't think there are any words that have really been necessary.'

The dark of the forest reflected in his eyes as he spoke.

She stepped away from the mirror so that she was full in the centre of the room, the carpet's texture brushing against her bare feet.

'You're right,' she replied. 'But I can still say that I love you.'

She luxuriated in the words for a moment. She saw his fingers let go of the door. A change of tone was definitely needed.

'I love you so much I almost can't bear this.'

He nodded soberly, and seemed to ready himself to leave the room. She could see straight away that he had taken her meaning.

Just as they were about to step onto the path that climbed through the trees, she stopped and looked back at him.

'What is it?' he asked.

She reached out and rearranged the white rose in his buttonhole.

'I have to decide … whether I stay here or go back.'

His face was quite still, his expression very serious.

'When?'

'Oh, there are certain rules that I have to respect.' She thought for a moment. 'How long have I been here? I suppose it's been about two hours.'

Harry squinted at his watch.

'I suppose so, although I don't know exactly when you _arrived_.'

'In that case, the next window of opportunity would be in about five hours. That would make seven hours. After that it's seven days, seven months, and so on.'

'And have you made up your mind?' he asked. The look on his face suggested that he thought that she would disappear altogether if she decided to leave.

'No I haven't,' she said in a soft voice, reaching out and touching him on the arm. 'I don't know what on earth I'm going to do. Or, for that matter, what it is I'm doing now.'

'Well, whatever it is that you're doing, at least you're doing it here with me.' He gently touched her hand where it was gripping onto the material of his jacket. She looked away for a few moments, seeing nothing but blue sky above the tree canopy. Then she looked back into his eyes.

'If you weren't here, I'd be completely lost.'

They followed the path that led out of the clearing, winding through the trees before emerging onto a broad, undulating expanse at the top of the hill, seeing nothing and hearing no one but fleeting bursts of birdsong from distant trees.

'The barrier must be round here somewhere,' said Harry, taking out his wand and looking left and right for some sort of marker.

Glancing down at her feet, Hermione noticed that a single clipped red rose had been laid on the grass.

'What about that?' she murmured.

Without saying anything, Harry flourished his wand in the direction of the rose.

A layer of enchantment dissolved, and suddenly they could see the party guests gathering on the crest of the hill, hidden from the eyes of the uninvited. Out in the open the sunlight was harsher, and the heat enveloped Hermione in a kind of warm numbness that dulled the butterflies in her stomach. As they approached, they could see that the hill's rounded, grassy top had for the purpose of the afternoon's entertainments been magically landscaped to include a fountain, a maze, stone statues depicting mythological scenes and tree-lined avenues, arbours and bowers. Guests were sitting in small groups on stone benches, and a bohemian-looking house elf stood at a distance, serenading them with lute music.

'Isn't this all a bit hallucinatory?' Harry remarked.

'The invitation did say that they were having a _fete galante_,' Hermione replied. 'This sort of looks what I imagine one of them to look like.'

Ginny and Henoc stepped forward to receive Harry and Hermione. Ginny was dressed in a long, flowing white dress that seemed from another century. She was even carrying a parasol. Henoc was dressed in a smart, pale suit that looked more contemporary, or perhaps timeless. He greeted them with a mock ceremonial bow, and invited them to take tea.

As they began to mingle among the guests, Hermione glanced from face to face. A vague sense of dread began to gnaw at her as she looked for familiar faces. Henoc's parents were fairly easily recognisable: urbane, distinguished and just as smartly dressed as he was. With them was a tall, handsome girl with a strong resemblance to Henoc that she guessed must be his sister.

Standing among Henoc's family and friends were Caius Hanmer and, of all people, Ilaria de Angelis. Caius bowed in Hermione and Harry's direction with mock seriousness, his eyes glinted mischievously, as she had often seen them do. Ilaria gave them a little wave.

'Why are you smiling?' Harry asked, looking curiously at Hermione's expression.

'Oh, it's a little complicated to explain,' she replied.

'It's something to do with where you've come from.'

A wistfulness seemed to creep into his voice.

'If I have time I'll explain it to you,' she replied, her voice catching the same melancholy tone.

There was a bright, innocent air about Ilaria. Hermione realised that she had forgotten just how charming she could be. The last she had heard of her was that she was somewhere in Argentina. _She ran away, poor girl. Out of shame_. She clung to Caius's arm as they spoke to Henoc's parents. _Oh so they're an item here?_

Then the Weasleys were before them: Charlie, Bill and Fleur, some relatives of the family she had seen before, and Mr and Mrs Weasley, chatting politely with Neville and Luna. _No George and Fred. And no Ron_.

She looked around her for any sign of Fred and George, but they were nowhere to be seen. Now there was nothing to do but to join the Weasleys, who received them with smiles, handshakes and warm embraces. Hermione enquired after the twins to Mrs Weasley in a low voice. She could feel her voice cracking slightly as she spoke Fred's name.

'Oh they'll be along in a little while,' said Mrs Weasley brightly. 'They've had to leave someone else in charge of the shop, that's probably what's keeping them.'

Hermione nodded nervously and sat down.

As the sun was still hot, the guests remained in the shade, sitting under the arbours or walking the tree-lined avenues, while some sat by the side of the fountain with their feet in the water. A long table had been spread out and covered with a buffet of countless delicacies, of which Harry brought Hermione a selection on a little china plate. To take her mind off things, she kept trying to catch the eye of the house elf playing the lute. The elf, who was dressed as a harlequin, seemed lost in the appreciation of the music he was playing, which seemed to intermingle with the fall of the water in the fountain and the gentle ripples of conversation and laughter around the party. When she finally caught his eye, he gave her a broad wink and a grin and continued to stroke the strings of the lute. As the shadows lengthened, Henoc and Ginny stood up to dance, and Hermione suddenly remembered the decision that lay before her. As some of Henoc's family and friends stepped forward to dance, Hermione jumped up and, grabbing Harry's hand, led him to the little expanse of polished stone that served as a dance floor.

'I'm starting to wonder which place is real,' she blurted out as they slowly swirled around. 'Is it here or there?'

'You know I can't answer that,' said Harry. 'Which one would you say? '

'I haven't had time to decide.'

'So stay longer and find out.'

'Don't you want the normal Hermione back?'

'You are the normal Hermione. Or you're just as normal as her.' His face was clouded with confusion. 'I mean, you're the same person. You have the same memories, don't you?'

She thought about it for a moment.

'If you were to ask me what we did here last weekend, if I look hard I can see the memory. It's like there's two layers: my memories from where I come from, and Hermione's memories from here. But it's starting to be a bit unclear which layer's on the top, if you see what I mean?'

'You're worried about forgetting who you are,' said Harry.

'Yes.'

'But you're still Hermione.'

'Yes! But I mustn't forget that I'm a visitor here. Otherwise I might never go back.'

'So you do mean to go back.'

A thought shot through her mind, causing an instant of panic.

'What if there's no Hermione now where I come from?'

His expression darkened.

'I see your point.'

Suddenly she stopped in mid-twirl, her eyes wide with fear. Harry came to a halt a couple of moments later and turned to see what it was she had seen. Emerging from under a line of trees were Fred and George Weasley.

Hermione grabbed Harry's arm and squeezed it like a ligature. Then silently she leaned her forehead against his shoulder. She glanced up at him from where her head was resting. He was staring straight ahead as if out over the edge of the hill, his face white and tense.

'I have to speak to him,' she said quietly.

He looked back at her and managed a little smile.

'You know, I really don't want to know what happens to me in the other place,' he said laconically, taking hold of her hand and kissing it. She felt that the look on her face must be a pretty strange one.

They stepped down off the stone platform and headed towards them. Fred and George were strolling along, too absorbed by their usual banter to see Harry and Hermione. As they came nearer, George glanced up and waved to them, and nudged his brother, who also looked in their direction. As soon as Hermione's eyes met Fred's, she felt her legs buckle beneath her. At the same time, Fred turned white and stopped dead in his tracks. Gripping her arm firmly, Harry steadied her and the four of them stood very still, looking at each other from a short distance. Suddenly Fred dropped to his knees, brushing away his brother's concern. He lowered himself into a sitting position on the ground, his eyes trained on Hermione.

'Can you keep walking? ' Harry whispered.

She responded by squeezing his hand, and they walked slowly to where Fred was sitting and George standing over him. Hermione kneeled down before Fred. He looked up at her.

'You know, don't you?' she said in a hushed voice.

'Yeah, I know,' he replied.

'How do you know?'

He shook his head.

'I don't know how. It just hit me in an instant.'

'How do you feel?'

'Incredibly tired, like I need to rest forever.'

She threw her arms around his neck and pressed her face against his cheek, which was cold and clammy.

'You can't imagine how good it is to see you,' she said in a low voice.

'And how weird it is not to see him,' Fred replied.

She nodded but said nothing.

'Go back,' he said finally. 'You remind me I don't belong among the living.' He pursed his lips and smiled thinly. 'Sorry, I don't mean that.'

'It's ok,' she said. 'I intend to go back. And I'll take back with me the memory that you're alive in this place.'

He nodded, his eyes glassy but clear.

'I'd ask you to say hi from me but you might get some funny looks.'

Somehow she found herself smiling at that.

'Sorry about that,' he continued in a louder, firmer voice. 'One of my turns, I suppose.'

He pulled himself to his feet.

'What turns would those be?' asked George, not sure whether to take his brother seriously. Fred reached out and clapped his brother on the back. His legs still seemed unsteady.

'Nothing a few drinks won't sort out. Eh Harry?'

'Oh definitely,' Harry replied with an air of forced jocularity. 'There's plenty left too.'

Hermione glanced at the three of them for a moment. Then she began to walk very quickly away from them in the direction of the trees.

'Hermione, wait!' Harry cried, and started to head after her. He looked around and saw that half the party was looking in their direction. Mrs Weasley was already heading towards them, calling out to Harry, asking him what had happened to Fred, why had he been sitting on the ground.

'I'm sorry,' he called out in the direction of the guests. 'We'll be back.'

She walked straight through the barrier of enchantment and into the real trees that lay beyond it. She felt warmer in the shade than she had beneath the sun. She advanced through the trees, the sun seemingly fading overhead. _Is it getting darker or am I starting to fade away here?_ _Maybe my body's not going to survive this. Time has been messed up too much. _Every possible direction seemed to her a dead end. Dimly she heard her name being called out behind her. She stopped walking, trying to catch hold of it as it rebounded through the trees. She looked behind her and saw Harry coming in her direction, forcing his way through undergrowth she had barely noticed. She had strayed into a small clearing in the wood. She started to walk back towards him, but her legs almost gave out, so she stopped to lean against the grey bark of a solitary birch tree.

'You're going right now, are you?' he said breathlessly as he caught up with her.

She looked at him through the dappled light of the trees.

'Not right now,' she replied hesitantly. 'Not willingly anyway.'

'But you are going.'

She hastily pushed her hair out of her eyes.

'Don't you think it's the right decision?'

'I reckon it'll all be all right in the end,' he replied, his face ashen. She felt terrible for him.

'I don't want to kill the living and bring back the dead,' she murmured, scarcely getting the words out.

He smiled grimly.

'Fred knew, didn't he?'

'Yes,' she whispered.

'That's weird.'

'Really weird. But I'm glad it was like that. It makes me feel less alone.'

'You're not alone.'

'No, I'm not alone with you,' she said, smiling and running her hand down his cheek. 'But he could see the other place. The place where I'm from.'

His face darkened.

'You wouldn't have agreed to leave there if you were happy. Why am I not there to make you happy?'

Tears began to well up.

'You do make me happy there, Harry.'

'But where am I?'

'Do you want me to answer?' she said, her eyes dark and overpowering.

'No, there's no need.' he said. 'Fate is fate.'

_And your fate will be mine._ She pressed her lips against his, throwing her arms around his neck and pulling herself against him. Suddenly the line that had divided them was no longer there. And his skin, his lips and his body felt so familiar, so much like home.

At last she pulled away from him, pressing her finger against his lips and touching his face one more time. Then she put her hand to his arm, to hold him at some kind of distance.

He smiled.

'Don't worry. I know you're still leaving.'

She nodded stiffly, biting her lip and digging her nails into her palms. Dividing what had only just been united felt like an act very much against nature. _Ridiculous, of course._

'If it's any help, the right Hermione will be back very soon. I'm sure she'll do a very good job in my place.'

She could see him trying to smile at her feeble attempt at humour.

'It's weird that that isn't a comfort to me. I feel like I'm betraying one of you. But which one?'

She felt a tear forming.

'I don't know, Harry, I really don't know. In fact I don't think I've ever known so little as I do now.'

He stroked her cheek and raised her eyes to look into his. She looked into them for a few instants then looked away, just a little to the side. She groped around for a change of tone.

'If I go on like this much longer, my heart's going to fall apart at the seams.'

She could hardly have said the words in a more matter-of-fact tone of voice. But even without looking back, she knew the words wouldn't wound him. _My husband_, she thought. _I don't deserve him_. _Not here anyway._

* * *

'This is the place,' she said. 'At least it is where I came from.'

The rotting remains of a wall emerged from a tangle of gorse a few feet from where they were standing. Nothing more of Pendle House seemed to be intact. The sun was still out, but was waning in the late afternoon. They had spent the best part of an hour wandering the forested, lonely hills where Hermione knew the house lay. It had begun to seem like they would never find the place, and that the opening in time through which Hermione hoped to pass would close up. Little time remained. The end was everywhere. She was almost willing it to end. Even if it meant losing Harry again, not to mention passing up the opportunity to stay a little longer and explore a place that seemed so bright in comparison with where she knew she had to go.

Between fleeing Blizzard Hill and apparating to the vicinity of Pendle House, there had been a little time for exploring. At Harry's suggestion, they had gone first to Ron's grave, which lay in a tiny cemetery on the side of a hill, almost overlooking the house in Ottery St Catchpole. The cemetery was bordered by an orchard, and the branches of apple trees hung low over its fence. She remembered the funeral and the grieving. It had taken a long time to get over his death. Standing in front of his grave started to bring on a renewal of those feelings. Then a memory came to her of the vaguely ridiculous swagger Ron often adopted when walking around Ottery St Catchpole, and it checked the instinct to mourn him. How could she mourn someone whom she knew very well was still walking the earth?

Another point of call had been the street where Hermione's parents' house stood. They stood on the pavement, looking up the garden path at its smart Edwardian façade, Hermione trying to discern whether she could make out any signs of movement behind its windows. They rang the doorbell and when nobody answered, Hermione tugged Harry quickly back down the path, as if they were playing knock-down ginger.

The last place they went to before Pendle House had been Hogwarts. Very few people had the right to apparate into the grounds of the castle, but it seemed only fair that Harry and Hermione should be among them. It was the middle of term, so rather than appear in the middle of the courtyard, they came to a secluded spot in the grounds from where they had a clear view of the castle walls. They stood silently for a few moments, looking up at the castle.

'Do you want to speak to anyone?' Harry asked, as they walked along a little trodden path skirting the edge of the woods.

'Like who?'

'Professor McGonagall? Hagrid?'

She thought about it for a moment. _They've been chased out of Hogwarts along with everyone else._ It did her good to see Hogwarts restored to what it should be, but the enjoyment was spoiled by the knowledge of what it had become in the other place. She hadn't gone into much detail with Harry about where she had come from.

'No,' she said. 'I just wanted to look at the place for a bit. We can go now if you like.'

They started to turn when Harry suddenly caught her by the arm. His touch triggered a sensation that she was getting more and more used to.

'What is it?' she asked languidly.

'I think someone's watching us,' he whispered.

'Where?'

He pointed to an area of undergrowth just where the trees started. Something seemed to move behind some brambles.

'You can come out of there,' Harry called out. 'We're not going to report you to Filch.'

After a few moments a dark-haired girl in Ravenclaw colours emerged from behind the bushes. She contemplated Harry and Hermione for a moment, then walked rather nonchalantly towards them.

'Wow,' said the girl as she reached where they were standing. 'Harry-Potter-and-Hermione-Granger.' She seemed no more than about 12.

'Why were you watching us?' asked Harry.

'I wasn't,' said the girl. 'I like to walk around here on my own sometimes. I don't usually see many people, so I hid. Did you mean it when you said you won't tell on me to Mr Filch?'

'I would never do something like that,' Harry replied with a grin.

'Have you been to a party?' asked the girl, looking curiously at Hermione's dress.

'Uh, yes,' replied Hermione. 'What's your name?' she continued, scrutinising the girl, who now struck her as vaguely familiar.

'Mercy Herrick,' said the girl, without blinking.

'Herrick?' Hermione exclaimed.

'Does that mean something to you?' asked Harry, turning to her.

Hermione came closer to the girl and looked carefully into her green eyes. They were bright and unnerving. _Could she have a daughter? Could she be a witch?_

'You remind me of someone,' said Hermione. 'Her name was Herrick as well.'

'Maybe you knew my mother?' said Mercy Herrick, her eyes wide with interest.

'Is her name Lillian?,' Hermione asked.

'It was,' the girl replied gently. 'My mother's dead.' She looked up at Hermione, not breaking eye contact. 'Like yours,' she added, suddenly turning to Harry.

'Did you … did you get the chance to know her?' Harry asked.

'I was seven when she died,' replied Mercy, almost without blinking.

'I'm sorry,' said Hermione. 'I didn't want to upset you.'

'You didn't.'

For a moment she wanted to ask how Lillian had died.

'Your mother wasn't a witch, I think,' Hermione continued. 'Unless I've mixed her up with somebody else.'

'No, she wasn't,' said Mercy. 'My father is. He came to claim me after my mother died. He wanted me to know about my birthright,' she added, fingering her wand. 'He let me keep my mother's name though.

How did you know her?'

Hermione shivered slightly.

'It's a bit complicated,' she replied, wondering what on earth she could say about Lillian. 'Your mother was a brilliant person.'

'She was very clever,' said Mercy. 'And funny, and kind.'

Hermione glanced for a moment at Harry, then back at Mercy Herrick.

_Did she know she was sending me to a place where she was dead? I bet she did._

'I'm glad,' was all she said, and shivered again. She didn't want to know anymore. She turned to Harry.

'I think it's time we went.'

Harry nodded swiftly. Hermione turned back to Mercy.

'We have to go now,' she said. 'We have an … appointment.'

'Ok,' said Mercy. 'I should be getting back inside anyway.'

'It was nice to…' Hermione began.

'I have a picture of her,' said Mercy, interrupting her and touching her on the arm. 'Do you want to see it?'

'I …uh … yes.'

Mercy lifted up a locket that hung on her chest, over the top of her school sweater. She whispered an incantation, the words of which they couldn't make out, and the locket opened. Hermione looked down at the tiny, circular picture in the locket. The dazzling green eyes and strange smile that had mocked her so many times were waiting for her there. But the gaze was clearer and the smile kinder, albeit still slightly ironic.

'It's nice to see her like that,' said Hermione in a slightly distracted voice. Mercy said nothing, but whispered her incantation again, and the lid of the locket slid shut.

'One more thing,' said Hermione, as Harry took her hand in preparation to leave. 'Would you mind not telling anyone you saw us here this afternoon?'

'Oh no problem, I'm good at keeping secrets,' said the girl, her green eyes glinting as she watched them disappear.

'Down in the basement, I think you said,' said Harry, stepping over the ruined threshold into where the hallway once stood.

'That's right,' said Hermione warily, following him within the house's skeletal imprint and pulling a prickly twig off the sleeve of her jacket. _What must we look like, dressed up so smart to poke around a ruin in the middle of nowhere._

'Which way?' said Harry, looking around at the remnants of walls. The flagstones that made up the floor were still there, leading like a kind of overgrown stone pathway towards the kitchen.

'Through there,' replied Hermione, pointing through a shattered door frame. 'Then down.'

They passed under the doorway and Hermione pointed to an opening on the ground, almost completely covered over with a net of brambles. Harry took out his wand and burned them away. Then using wand light he illuminated the steps that still descended into the cellar. They went slowly down the steps, their wands lighting the way.

The cellar was dank and had an earthy smell, but had been largely spared the effects of decay. Its relatively well-preserved appearance was helped by it being completely devoid of any furniture or belongings that would have rotted. The table used by the Seven was not there, of course, and for a moment Hermione wondered whether the promise of returning wasn't just a trick after all. They had been poking around the cellar for several minutes when Harry suddenly called to her.

'What's this?'

She crossed to where he was standing and looked into the shaft of light cast by his wand. Etched on the stone floor, and seemingly slightly illuminated, lay a rendering of the Seven-Pointed Circle, a couple of feet across. She drew breath.

'What we're looking for,' she said. She touched Harry on the arm. In the gleam of the wand light, his face was pale and his eyes serious.

'How long do we have?' she asked.

Harry glanced down at his watch.

'A few minutes yet,' he replied.

'Good,' said Hermione. She put her arm through his and laid her head on his shoulder.

'We'll see each other again,' she whispered.

'It won't be the same us,' he replied grimly.

'We aren't so different in the other place,' she said finally. 'All that matters most is the same'.

Harry looked down at the Circle on the stone floor.

'Tell me again: what's going to happen?' he said. 'Are you going to step on that thing and just disappear?'

'I don't know,' she replied. He pulled her tighter.

'You said that you didn't know which place is real: this one or the place you come from.'

'Don't think too much about it. I barely know what I'm talking about.'

'But still,' he insisted, 'if this life isn't real, won't it just cease to exist the moment you leave?'

She turned to face him and took his face in her hands.

'You can't cease to exist,' she said almost fiercely, 'because you exist in the other place. I don't know how it works and I'm not sure I want to … That must be a first.'

She glanced down at the floor, because something had caught her eye. The circle drawn there seemed to be glowing brighter. When she looked back at Harry, his expression was fixed and sombre.

'I'm so sick of leaving you,' she said at last.

A smile flickered across his face.

'I wonder what I'll say, in the other place, when you tell me about all this.'

It took her a few moments to return the smile.

'You'll give me the look you gave me when I told you here,' she said cheerfully. 'But you'll believe me. You always do.'

'You're right. I will,' he said in reply, almost inaudibly.

They kissed, then hugged each other tightly, their heads pressed against each other. _As if one of us is about to get on a train._ Slowly she let go of his hand. Then she went and stood in the centre of the circle. A faint drag seemed to be emanating from the ground, trying to pull her down. She looked back at Harry. He was standing a little way back from the circle, looking at her intently from out of the darkness, his face still illuminated by wand light. The pull from the ground was growing stronger, and seemed now to be eddying around her. When she looked again at Harry, his image seemed fainter.

'Hermione!' He seemed to be calling to her, but she could barely tell over the rushing in her ears.

'It's not the last time,' she called out into the blur. But already she couldn't see or hear anything.


	70. The penitence of Lillian Herrick - Ch 23

23\. Kind of an epiphany

When the feeling hit him, Ron was skimming stones into the loch. He was staring at its grey surface with a degree of satisfaction, having made a flat pebble bounce four times before dropping under the water, when his chest constricted and his head suddenly felt like a large boulder. As he felt his legs giving way, he lowered himself onto the bank and lay on his side, looking aslant at the sky.

The next thing he was conscious of was the sound of someone moving through the grass nearby.

'Are you alright?' a voice said to him, raising him from his torpor. He tried to shift his body slightly in the direction of the voice. His body felt like iron and his strength was all gone.

'What happened to you?' said the voice again, and he felt a hand touch his shoulder.

'I feel really weird,' he managed to say, half mumbling, or so he thought.

'Can you sit up?' The voice was that of a girl, with a soft Scottish accent. _Beth_, Ron murmured under his breath. He didn't like to be found in such a position of weakness, but still he was glad that it was Beth who had found him.

'I can try,' he replied, still mumbling. A cold shiver passed rapidly through his body. Once he had shaken it off, his limbs felt lighter, so he was able to pull himself into a sitting position.

The sky and the loch looked darker than he expected. _How long have I been lying here?_

He turned and found himself looking straight into Beth's concerned face as she crouched next to him on the bank. Her eyes were grey and her reddish-blonde bobbed hair hung down to her chin. Her face was pale, but her cheeks were slightly ruddy.

'What time is it?' he asked suddenly.

'About two o'clock,' said Beth.

'That's odd,' said Ron, looking again at the sky, which still looked dark to him. He obviously hadn't been lying there for so long. He regretted his last words. _I must seem like a weirdo_.

'You're very pale. Was magic done on you?' Beth asked quickly in a sharper tone, raising herself up and scanning the precincts of the loch and the woods that lay beyond it.

'No, I don't think so,' said Ron. _What did happen then_? An idea struck him. But it was weird.

'I was standing here by the lake,' he began, 'when all of a sudden, I … sort of felt like I didn't exist. And the feeling hit me so hard, that it knocked the life out of me. I can't explain it otherwise. I know it sounds completely weird but I swear it's the truth.'

'Why shouldn't something like that knock the life out of you?' said Beth in a gentler tone, patting Ron on the arm. 'Maybe you had a sort of epiphany.'

'A what?'

'You know, when suddenly you realise something very profound.'

The idea that he had just experienced a profound epiphany was quite pleasing.

'On the other hand,' Beth continued, 'it could be that someone was trying to curse you. Though I don't know what kind of curse might cause you to feel like that. We should speak to my father. And we should probably search our lands too.'

She helped him to stand then walked him in the direction of the village. Soon he was able to walk unaided. They skirted the loch, dodging through the trees that lay close to the water's edge. They paused just below the main road that cut across the McAuliffe lands, checking that no one was passing, before crossing to the other side.

Beyond a narrow belt of trees, the first houses of the McAuliffes' village came into sight. Little scraps of forest lay all around the village so that once inside them, there was no way of telling that you were on a narrow peninsula, the sea on either side.

It had been Beth, or Bethesda as her mother called her, who had met them in the woods, that first night when they arrived. The dark expression on her face under the moonlight had turned to a broad smile when she recognised her younger brother Daniel.

Mr McAuliffe, the head of the family, had examined the three wizards coolly when they were brought before him. He was a thin, rather dry-looking man of about fifty, with sandy hair and a long and rather grim face. Mr McAuliffe seemed to have an idea of who Tobias Destrument was, even though the McAuliffes had, as it turned out, always lived at a distance from wizarding society. He took a dim view of the Citadel and of Gondulph Belhaine.

'Ordinarily I wouldn't countenance sheltering the likes of you,' he had said sharply, as he sat on an armchair in his low-ceilinged sitting room, Ron, Tobias and Enid all lined up in front of him on the rug. Ron had started to point out that he had nothing to do with the Citadel, that he had been involved in arresting them in the first place, but Mr McAuliffe had stilled him with a cool look that seemed to say '_I'll get to you in a minute_.'

'But my son has spoken on behalf of you, and he wouldn't give me his word without due cause.' As he spoke he eyed Daniel McAuliffe, who stood quietly by the fireplace alongside his sister.

'So you can stay,' he had continued slowly. 'But any mischief from you,' here jabbing his finger in the direction of Tobias and Enid, 'and you'll be escorted off these lands.' Enid Blackledge had looked at Mr McAuliffe in her normal watery manner, hardly acknowledging his presence, but Tobias had given him every assurance, in the most contrite of terms, that they were deeply in his gratitude and that their political views would in no way be an impediment to their being the most unobtrusive and useful of house guests. Mr McAuliffe had acknowledged Tobias's speech with a nod, and that was that.

'I know of you too,' he had said, turning at last to Ron. 'I've never had any time for the Ministry, nor for its school, nor for many wizards in general, but now we've to look out for each other. What's going on in this country is an outrage.'

'It is,' Ron had replied.

'Are any of your people in there, son?' Mr McAuliffe had asked, in what sounded for the first time like a gentler tone.

Ron had shaken his head.

'No, we were in the Ministry that day, but we got out in time,' he had answered, his head cast down. He had no very good memories of that day.

'He fought the witch-hunters in front of the Ministry, him and all his family,' said Daniel McAuliffe. 'He was at Harry Potter's side when they shot him down. He lost a finger himself.'

Out of the corner of his eye, Ron had noticed Beth's gaze searching out his missing finger. He had moved his fingers a little where they were resting on his belt.

'Is that so?' Mr McAuliffe had said.

'Yes,' said Ron, who resisted the temptation to show them where he was missing a finger.

'You were lucky.'

'I was.'

'And you intend to fight them again?'

'We have to.'

'That's true enough,' Mr McAuliffe had said. 'But I have to ask you not to make our home a staging ground for a resistance movement. We offer you shelter, and a promise that none of _those people_ will set foot in this place. But if you go about drawing attention to yourselves, well, I'm sure you realise we can't hold off an army here.'

'We're just looking to rest,' Tobias had said. 'The most we want to do is talk over our next move.'

'That sounds reasonable enough.'

He had dismissed them soon after that, placing them in the hands of Mrs McAuliffe, a gentle, soft-spoken lady with prematurely grey hair and sharp blue eyes, who went out into the neighbourhood to secure them a bed for the night. The McAuliffe's house had only one spare bedroom, and Ron was allotted it, while Tobias and Enid were found lodging in nearby houses. By the time Ron had been given food, bedding, a towel and a tour of the house, he had been introduced to the whole family. In addition to Daniel and Beth, the McAuliffes had two more children at home: an older brother, who came quietly in from the pub halfway through the evening, and a shy, pretty girl of about 12, staring inquisitively at Ron from her sister's side.

The community seemed to accept the wizards they were sheltering. Ironically, Tobias and Enid were taken in by muggle families. One of the first things that struck Ron about the village was that not only were the McAuliffes well respected, upstanding members of the community, but that everyone seemed to know that they were wizards. He could detect no fear or distrust towards wizards. _Even though there were once witch trials not far from here,_ Beth had told him. It also became clear that the McAuliffes were the only wizards in the village, although Beth explained to him that among the villagers were quite a few once wizarding families in which the ability to do magic had apparently run dry.

Ron had half-expected to come across loads of witches and wizards hiding in the Rhinns, but there seemed to be none apart from them. Daniel told him that a wizard had come to stay with relatives at the northern end of the peninsula, and one day, he, Ron and Tobias had hiked up to the north coast to look for him. The walk took them to a rather dreary pebble-dashed cottage on a grassy hill overlooking the sea. The small, rather wizened man in his 40s who opened the door to them and introduced himself as Pelham, acknowledged with a wan smile that he had left behind a job at St Mungo's and a flat in Bromley to stay with an aunt.

'I'd hoped that magic could be practised here undetected,' he had said rather sadly, as they sat round in the small living room drinking a cup of tea. 'But since I've been here I've scarcely had any need for it.'

Ron, Tobias and Enid lived as discreetly as possible among the people of the Rhinns. Like the wizard in the cottage, they had little need to do magic, apart from the occasional, furtive labour-saving spell, or the odd charm just for the sake of it. In any case, the excitement of being able to do magic without fear of discovery soon wore off. Although the McAuliffes all seemed to carry wands much of the time, they hardly ever seemed to use them. The intensive use of magic to perform household tasks that had always been the norm at the Burrow was quite alien to the McAuliffes who, for the most part, so it seemed to Ron, lived like muggles. No wonder no one ever detected them. As a result, perhaps, his descriptions of life in the Rhinns offered little appeal to the rest of his family, who for the time being were still living under the comfortable wing of the Tourniers, having been persuaded to exchange their rented cottage for another directly adjoining the grounds of Lightfoot House. '_Wouldn't you rather come back down here, love?'_ Ron's mother had asked him more than once down the telephone.

Ron's answer was normally evasive, but basically no, he was quite happy where he was, even with the continued presence of Tobias and Enid. Every few days Tobias would call a meeting, invariably in his bedroom, to discuss possible plans and pass on scraps of information from the outside world, but they had very little material with which to advance their plans. Tobias was fixated on the idea of entering Hogwarts, something Ron found a bit strange seeing as how he'd never been there. Tobias's idea, such that it was, seemed to revolve around a symbolic takeover of Hogwarts. Tobias had information that little more than a skeleton staff of safe wizards guarded the castle, making his plan achievable. However, the plan carried with it the risk of being arrested and spending time in prison, which was hardly a very appealing prospect. At best they would be put in the Ministry of Magic; at worst they would end up in a muggle prison. It was obvious that Tobias rather relished the prospect of being a political prisoner. Ron couldn't help remembering Harry's theory that the attempted assassination of Kinglsey Shacklebolt had been carried out to set the leaders of the Citadel up in just such a guise. As for the idea of entering Hogwarts itself, Ron found it surprisingly appealing, although a better plan was obviously needed.

Once Ron caught a fleeting glimpse of Stanislas Pizzuoli in conversation with Enid on the edge of the village. He looked very earnest, making Ron think that he was visiting more out of some kind of fondness for Enid than to pass on substantial information to Tobias. _There's no accounting for taste_. In any case, Ron deliberately associated as little as possible with Tobias and Enid and as much as possible with the McAuliffes, particularly with Beth. The only thing that could spoil the time he spent with them was the occasional glimpse of Enid, surveying them silently from a distance.

The McAuliffes' rambling single-storey stone house stretched out in front of them. Beth led him over the threshold and into the broad, flagstone-floored kitchen. He liked how you always went into the house through the kitchen. It was like that in the Burrow too. Ginny had passed on the news that the Burrow had apparently been visited by the Cradocks' house elf, who once inside had taken it upon himself to do some strenuous dusting, much to Mrs Weasley's embarrassment. Ginny had also told him that Draco Malfoy, of all people, seemed to have taken something of an interest in Hortensia Cradock. _He won't get __anywhere with Hortensia though_, Ginny had told him.

Beth's mother was sitting on a chair at the kitchen table, apparently trying to get a stain out of a tablecloth. Beth's younger sister Alysandra was sitting at the end of the table, where she was busily writing in a journal, or possibly a school exercise book. Alysandra McAuliffe went to school locally, as all the other McAuliffe children had done before her. They studied magic, so Beth had told Ron, with their parents and with the occasional itinerant teacher.

'Mum, something weird has happened,' said Beth, as they came through the door. Mrs McAuliffe looked up with a look of concern.

'What's the matter dear?' she said.

Alysandra glanced up for a moment then went back to her work.

'It's nothing really,' said Ron hastily, as he stood rather unsteadily in the kitchen.

'Well you're not well, that's as plain as anything,' said Mrs McAuliffe, looking Ron up and down. 'Come and sit yourself at the table,' she added, raising her hand in a languid but friendly manner and bidding him to sit.

'I found him lying by the loch,' said Beth, sitting down next to him at the table.

'You were looking for him, I suppose,' Alysandra piped up in a low voice, without looking up from her book. Beth visibly kicked her under the table.

'Tell them what happened,' said Beth firmly to Ron. He nodded and recounted his story. At first he felt a little embarrassed telling them, but as he spoke, he realised that the feeling of not existing hadn't left him. If anything, it was welling up inside him again. He stopped mid-sentence. He hadn't intended to: instead his lips just stopped moving and his voice stopped coming, as if there was no breath left in him. When he came to, he found Mr McAuliffe looking over him grimly.

'Have you come back to yourself now?' he asked, his wand drawn.

'Did you un-curse me?' Ron mumbled.

'I cast a charm to drive away any malicious spells,' Mr McAuliffe replied, 'but there were none about you. It's not a curse that's affecting you.'

'Then what's happening, Dad?' asked Beth in an anxious voice. She was still at Ron's side.

'Tell us again what you were feeling, if you can,' said Mr McAuliffe.

'It was the same feeling as before, by the loch,' said Ron. 'Like I didn't exist. And then … I was lying in the grass somewhere, not here but somewhere else, with sky above me, and my brother Fred was lying next to me. We were both just looking up at the sky, watching the clouds overhead. He said to me: 'I'm glad you passed by here.' It was really peaceful actually. And it was good to see Fred again.'

'Can this be magic?' asked Alysandra, her eyes wide with fear and curiosity.

'No Alys,' said Mr McAuliffe. 'It's something else altogether.'

Ron looked at him and Beth quizzically.

'Still,' said Mr McAuliffe, 'just in case, we'll search our lands and beyond them for any sign of magic done with malicious intent. We might have a word with your friends while we're at it,' he added, in obvious reference to Tobias Destrument and his sister. 'But in my opinion, this has done you good, not evil. There's more about you already.'

Now that he mentioned it, Ron did feel a change since he had come to. Suddenly he felt that there was no time to waste. Suddenly Tobias's vague plans to take over Hogwarts, even temporarily, seemed much more interesting. Breaking into the castle, taking some prisoners and waving the wizard flag from its turrets wasn't going to cut it, and he didn't want to be part of helping Tobias Destrument position himself as the leader of a wizarding resurgence. They had to do something more than just come across as terrorists, or even just as hooligans. They would have to do something more positive, something that might make people look at them more sympathetically. _What if we were to take back Hogwarts to try and reopen it for classes?_ He smiled to himself. The plan was probably hopeless, but something had to be done. He stood up suddenly.

'It's time to get moving,' he said decisively. 'We need to gather our strength. I want to call my family to come up here, and anyone else who wants to join us. We have to take action.'


	71. The penitence of Lillian Herrick - Ch 24

24\. Harry's shadow

Darkness enveloped Hermione, darkness devoid of light, sound or smell but somehow palpable, swirling around her as if she was surrounded by a black viscous liquid. The liquid gradually seemed to thin out, until it was more like a kind of dark water, or something with the texture and feel of water, only breathable. She tried to kick off and swim into the current, but the water held her fixed in place. Now she sensed a vague light shining down on her, rippling and distorted on what she imagined to be the water's surface far above. The water around her was all shadow, but the light above seemed to widen every few seconds. Then she understood that the current that held her was pushing her upwards towards the light bathing the surface. She rose until the current was pressing her against the underside of the water, the light beyond the film-like surface a dense, opaque expanse. Waves worked the water, pushing her with little ebbs and flows in a direction she imagined to be towards shore. And the tide carried her, until her back slid up onto a sloping shore of coarse sand and fine pebbles. The water broke over her face and evaporated quickly from her cheeks, the cold it left behind pervading her skin. Finally her eyes could take in the dense, overcast sky that stretched out above her. Then she knew where she was: the sky was a heavy shade of red.

She rolled onto her side and took a sidelong glance up the beach: it sloped gently upwards to a line of grass-covered dunes, a sparse, rocky headland beyond it. She listened to the waves as they rushed up onto the beach. _I'm not wet_, she suddenly realised. Then, intermingled with the gentle roar of the water came the sound of footsteps coming quickly down over the pebbles. She lifted her head slightly and turned into the direction of the footsteps. A dark silhouette was already above her, blocking out a section of the sky and reaching out a hand towards her. As she reached out her hand, someone was lifting her to her feet, lifting her with ease, as if she had no weight at all. Then arms were around her, familiar arms holding her tight, almost lifting her feet off the pebbles.

'Got you at last,' said Harry Potter.

She threw her arms around him and squeezed him tight.

'I'm so glad it's you!' she replied, almost shouting.

She looked hard into his face. There was something different about it. The first thing she noticed was that he wasn't wearing glasses. But his eyes didn't seem as green as they usually did. She leaned back a little in his arms to look him up and down: while his body felt as if it was completely there, she felt as if she couldn't quite see him clearly. It was as if a thin veil had been cast over him, a faint shadow, like a layer of gauze.

'What's wrong?' said Harry, looking at her quizzically with green-grey eyes.

'It is _really_ you, isn't it?'

She put her hand to his cheek, as if to pull away the veil. The cheek was warm and felt perfectly normal.

'Hermione, it is really me.'

She looked hard at him and believed him.

'You seem to be … in shadow,' she murmured.

'There aren't any mirrors here,' he said, 'so I'll have to take your word for it. But now you mention it, everything seems to me to be sort of in shadow here.'

_Is it because you're dead_?

She looked over his shoulder. A grassy headland rose away from them on one side, and the beach swept down into the water on the other.

'Is this an island?' she asked.

'Of course,' Harry replied.

'Is this _your_ island?' she continued.

'Yes, I'm sort of shipwrecked here.'

'And you've been here since …'

He took a pace back and pulled up his t-shirt. The bullets' entry wounds were visible on his torso.

'I'm not dead, though.'

'Are you sure?' She couldn't smother the anxiety in her voice.

She looked at him again. The shadow that lay across him was palpable, darkening his clothing, making his face and eyes pale and grey. _Maybe you're not dead, but are you dying?_

'I know what death is like, and this isn't it,' he added, his voice grim and determined. 'You're not dead either.'

'No, I'm not dead,' she replied. 'Just very lost.'

'You'll have to tell me everything,' he said. 'The real world only reaches me in, well, sort of like whispers.'

Together they walked a full circuit of the island: its headlands and shingle beaches, the crooked ridge that divided it into leeward and windward, its small interior of grassy hills and scattered trees, the concrete-walled lighthouse running on some unseen power, the spring in the copse. It didn't take long to cover it from end to end. At every glimpse of the sea, the same foam-tipped waves churned and fell back and fog blurred the horizon all around the island.

By the time they reached Harry's cabin, Hermione had finished the account of what had happened to her from the Ministry to her imprisonment at Pendle House. He listened quietly and keenly from the other side of the squat wooden table in the middle of his rickety house. At every pause, she could hear the wind whistling outside, rattling against the windows.

'It's always blowing, the wind,' Harry murmured placidly, his eyes distant and his pupils moving rapidly, as if they were following the wind as it swirled over the island. Hermione gave him a very deliberate, searching look. His eyes quickly returned to her, fixing her gaze with a tranquil, but empty expression.

'You said: 'got you at last' when I got here,' she said suddenly. 'How did I get here?'

He stretched slightly and smiled an absent sort of smile.

'Ever since I came here you've been near,' he began. 'Sometimes I could feel someone's eyes on me … feel somebody's breathing. There was always a kind of presence, sometimes further away, sometimes straining towards this place.'

'Serena has been keeping watch over you,' said Hermione softly.

'I know,' replied Harry. 'She speaks to me every day. But that's a different kind of sensation. I can tell the difference between her and you. When I was still awake, the last physical thing I remember was the smell of your hair. And here I can often smell your hair on the wind.'

She listened in silence. His voice was making a sort of stillness grow in her.

'I've tried to come here so many times,' she said in a low voice. 'I've stood on the cliffs, with those dark woods behind me, and tried to cross. I thought you didn't want me to come.'

He reached across the table and took her hand.

'It's not that. You couldn't come here, even though I wanted you to come. It wasn't time.'

She suddenly stopped stroking his hand.

'Time for what?'

'Time for me to go. But I couldn't go without you.'

She felt her heart thudding in her chest. _That's what the shadow is_.

'No Harry, you have to live. To come up to the surface.'

He shook his head.

'I wanted to. I wanted to come back. But my strength's failing.'

She looked at him in silence, taking in the enormity of what he had said. A tear rolled down her cheek.

'I hope you don't think I was being presumptuous, bringing you here', he said.

'No,' she replied in a whisper. 'You did the right thing.'

_Should I have stayed with him, in that other place,_ she wondered for a moment. _No. Harry and Hermione will live on in peace there. My place is with Harry here. _She looked down at her wrist. The lights still moved there, but their pace had seemingly slowed, and they didn't gleam as brightly.

The wind was blowing stronger. She was starting to notice its vaguely hypnotic effect. _Was this all part of Lillian's plan?_ She didn't think it was. She was still inside the Circle, loose under the red sky. She had almost regained a modicum of control over things.

'Has anyone ever come here?' she asked suddenly. 'Stepped foot on this island, I mean?'

'No one apart from you,' Harry replied.

This was a comfort to her. She was sure that if Lillian knew where she was, and wanted her back, she would already have breezed onto the island and claimed her.

She took Harry's hand again.

'Can we try to go back together?'

He looked up, as if the waking world lay above them. Then he looked back at her.

'We can't go to the surface. But we can leave this island.'

His tone increasingly unnerved her. She was a little surprised at how confident he was that he could leave his island: she thought that only the initiate could wander at will under the red sky.

'To go where?'

'To the place where everything is kept,' he said softly. He seemed to glance over her shoulder, at some distant point. She turned and tried to look in the direction he was looking. She could see nothing but the wooden interior of the cabin, but she saw what he meant. The great cupola looming over the strange, fragmented landscape.

She turned back to him.

'How do you know about it?' she asked.

'Sometimes on a clear day you can see it even from here,' he replied.

'Do you want to go there to read?'

'I have to go to the stairs.'

'The stairs?'

She racked her brains to try and remember hearing of a reference to them in all she had read on the Seven-Pointed Circle. She did remember coming across something about 'stairs in darkness'. It had come up in some metaphorical text, among a series of other images. She remembered an annotation beside the text, written in an unknown hand. It had read: '_misspelling? 'stars in darkness'? or 'stairs _into _darkness'_?' A feeling of dread welled up in her throat.

'What will you do at the stairs?' she asked, clutching his hand and speaking almost in a whisper.

'I'll announce myself,' he replied. 'Maybe someone will be waiting for me. For us. If you want to come.'

_If I can, I'll prevent this_, she suddenly thought to herself. But at the same time, she couldn't escape the feeling that she too had to go there.

'I don't fear death,' Harry said suddenly. 'After all, I've died before. It's just that I'm worn out.'

She squeezed his hand tighter, placing her other hand over the top of the joined hands. She couldn't tell if she was wringing her hands or Harry's.

'I'll go with you then,' she said softly and Harry nodded. 'I'll go with you and we'll see what it is we have to do. Whatever it is, we go together.'

Harry reached across with his free hand. They untangled their hands and locked them together separately over the table.

Together they went out of the lean-to. The wind seemed more turbulent, buffeting them as she led them down the slope to the beach.

'What can you see?' she said, gesturing at the open sea, which seemed featureless and empty.

'Just the sea,' said Harry. 'Sometimes boats go past in the distance. Sometimes you can make out land, but not from this beach.'

'Show me,' she said. This time he led her back onto the island's grassy interior, then down onto another beach.

'There,' he said, pointing into the mist.

She looked hard over the water. In the distance, it did look like there was some kind of dim coastline. As she looked through the mist, from time to time the coastline seemed to be moving. _It moves because everything is always in flux here_.

'I think that must be the way,' she said, pointing at the distant coastline.

'Yes, it's that way,' he said softly at her side. 'We'll need a boat.'

'Yes, you're right.'

He raised his hand and instantly a small boat rose up out of the water with a resounding gurgle a few feet away from them.

'That's handy,' she remarked.

They stepped off the beach and into the water. The water obligingly didn't wet them as they waded through the shallows to the boat.

'It feels strange to be leaving here,' he said, glancing back at the shore of the island.

'Do you want to stay here a little longer?' she asked.

'I can't,' he replied with a shake of his head.

'But you could leave here on your own?'

'I think so.'

'I don't think just anyone could leave their house under the red sky. But then again, pretty much no one's been through what you've been through in your life.'

Harry shrugged.

'I didn't really think about it,' he replied. 'I just know where I have to go and know that I can get there. I just couldn't conceive of doing it without you. By the way,

do you want to steer?'

She tried to smile.

'I'll try.'

With a little effort, she guided the boat through the water and pointed it in the direction of the distant coast. The mist seemed to part a little in front of them, but continued to hang over the horizon. They hadn't gone far when Harry turned back to look at the island that was rapidly disappearing behind them.

'I liked your island,' she said gently, glancing at him over her shoulder. 'If circumstances were different, I'd have liked to spend some more time there.'

He turned back and smiled.

'So would I.'

They seemed to move quickly through the water, but for a time the coastline they were making for didn't come any nearer. Instead, other islands reared up out of the mist, causing them to change course, veering either left or right. Some were rocky and barren, jutting out of the water at awkward angles, while others were flat and grass-covered. One island featured a broad, causeway of smoothed, regular rocks rising up to a tall cliff-top, while on another they glimpsed an elegant white clapperboard house standing a little way from the shore. Flames and thick black smoke belched from one island, but they could never make out any people.

'How far till we reach dry land?' he asked suddenly, breaking the silence of the sea.

She started to answer, then realised she wasn't quite sure what to say. It was if her concentration had been so fixed on steering the vessel and keeping on course for the coastline, that she had lost all sight of the unknown land that lay beyond it. Would they reach the cliffs she had stood on so many many times? She saw nothing but the fog-bound sea in front of them.

'Don't know,' she replied. 'Are we going in circles, do you think?'

Harry peered at the murky horizon.

'I could take over the steering for a while, if you like,' he said.

'Uh … ok,' she replied. She took a step back and took her eyes off the water. For a moment the boat lurched sideways then veered quickly back on course as Harry took control. If anything, the boat was suddenly moving faster. She looked over at him. He stood still at the prow of the boat, his eyes fixed on the sea and the coastline ahead, which now seemed to be coming clearer.

'You're good at that,' she remarked.

'What, at steering the boat? I don't know, I'm just making it up as I go along.'

_Why should I imagine I understand how things work here_?

The coastline was now much closer, stretching far off into the distance in both directions. The part they were approaching was marked by grey, ragged cliffs with grassy clifftops.

'Look over there,' said Harry suddenly.

He was pointing towards a narrow bay that seemed to mark the opening to a fjord, or something like it. It struck her that there was something foreboding, almost claustrophobic about the place.

'I don't think we should go there,' she said firmly.

'What's wrong?'

She looked again at the opening to the bay.

'I'm not sure exactly, there's something about it that I don't like. Sorry I can't be more specific. Trust me on this?'

He smiled.

'Who do you think you're talking to?'

She returned the smile and the boat began to turn. As she watched the opening begin to disappear into the distance, she turned again to him.

'If we went in there, somehow I feel like it would close up on us.'

He nodded tersely. The boat was now running along under the cliffs. Trees were visible on the cliff edges, suggesting that the shoreline was forested. Eventually they came to a small bay choked with trees, where the cliffs slumped down into the water. They ran the boat into shallow water then jumped out and walked that last few metres to the beach.

As they stood on the shore Hermione looked out at the boat.

'We can leave it here,' said Harry firmly. 'I don't think we'll need it again.'

'Wait,' said Hermione, briefly touching Harry's arm. She conjured a little anchor on the side of the boat and made it descend into the water. It quickly hit the bottom.

'Now it's here if we need it,' she said, glancing at him. He looked at the boat, then at Hermione.

'Ok.'

Beyond the tangled growth of trees that clung close to the water, the beach led up an incline to a denser growth of woodland.

'Why is there a forest here?' Hermione said out loud.

'Why wouldn't there be a forest here?' replied Harry in a slightly surprised tone.

'Because nothing real grows in this place,' said Hermione, reaching out and touching the nearest tree trunk. It felt exactly like a normal tree. 'Somebody must have caused this forest to grow.'

'Caused it to grow?' He looked at her strangely.

'I suppose everything seems real to you?' she asked quietly.

'Yes, as real as a dream.'

_A dream. I suppose this is like a dream for him_. _Is that where I am: in Harry's dreams_?

They made their way into the strange forest, weaving in and out of the trees and gradually moving uphill. Suddenly Harry stopped before a particularly tall and gnarled tree, with blackish bark.

'What is it?' said Hermione.

'I was just thinking,' said Harry, fingering the bark. 'If someone made this forest grow, maybe they left a mark to show that this is their land. Like this.'

He pointed to a rune-like carving on the tree. Hermione looked more closely. From the densely carved markings, she could discern several runes, written one on top of the other. She shivered. _Hate and hunt_.

'I've seen these before,' she said. 'I don't think they're a very good sign.'

Harry looked at the runes.

'They look familiar,' he said, 'I don't know where I've seen them. Somewhere when I was awake. But nothing from up there is very clear.'

He stood up, a worried look on his face.

'Hermione,' he said. 'I feel like there are gaps in my memory.'

'What sort of gaps?' she asked.

'Well, just now the name Seamus Finnigan came into my mind. I know I knew him, but I can't make out his face or remember any detail about him.'

'I don't like the sound of that,' she replied. The thought occurred to her that his memories might be gradually dwindling away.

'What about other people?' she asked. 'Professor Dumbledore. Hagrid. Professor Snape.'

He smiled.

'Yeah, they're all quite clear. Like Ron, and Ginny, and Fred and George.'

He took hold of her hand.

'You're the clearest.'

'I'm glad,' she replied in a low voice.

'But I have to admit I don't like this feeling of not being in control of my memories,' Harry continued. 'It's like they're floating around me in the air. Sometimes they sort of collide with me, only I don't know where they're from.'

She listened to the description of his memory with growing concern.

'I think we should get away from here,' she said suddenly. 'Get away from this tree and through this forest.'

'You're right,' said Harry. 'It's hiding our destination from us.'

'And let's think about people in our past,' Hermione added. 'To see what the both of us can remember. We may find that you remember more about them than I do.'

He smiled sadly.

'I doubt it, Hermione.'

She squeezed his hand. _Don't ever forget my name, Harry._

They left the marking on the tree and continued on through the forest.

After about a quarter of a mile they came out into a clearing. It was a long, rectangular space covered with clipped grass, stretching over a hundred yards long left to right and fifty yards wide. Hermione suddenly felt her heart make a great thump in her chest. _I recognise this place_. _It's a bad place._ It seemed to have been carved smoothly out of the forest, as if it had been created especially for some ceremonial purpose or sporting event. It was perfectly calm and seemed completely empty. Here, for the first time, the sky was fully visible, blood red and stretching from horizon to horizon. She remembered where she had seen the clearing: in a picture that hung in the portrait room in Villa Mariposa, her first creation within the Circle. A picture put there by somebody else. _By Lillian?_

'I don't like this place,' said Harry, looking from left to right with a sort of scowl.

'Me neither,' said Hermione, looking across the clearing herself. On the far side the treeline resumed, as if the clearing were no more than a small interruption in the vast sprawl of forest. Still nothing was stirring.

Harry turned to Hermione.

'Shall we cross?'

She nodded and they began to cross the clearing across its shorter axis at a quick, wary pace. They were nearly on the other side when they heard the sound of a horse galloping. They stopped and looked into the trees on the far side, where the sound of pounding hooves seemed to be coming from. Something red and white flashed through the trees off to their right. Hermione felt her heart begin to pound again. This was the first sight of anything _alive_ in that place. Her first instinct was to hide, but that was surely pointless. She looked at Harry. He was looking intently into the trees, his expression grim.

'What shall we do?' she said.

'Go and meet it,' he replied tersely. He seemed to be bristling with anger, like a wild animal that had just had its territory invaded.

They crossed the line of trees and found themselves in a long avenue of plane trees running parallel to the clearing. A large white horse was galloping under the trees, rode by a figure dressed in red. Harry stepped out into the middle of the avenue, staring down the galloping horse.

'Harry is that a good… ?' said Hermione, but seeing that he wouldn't be dissuaded, she went and stood next to him, staring at the white horse and the red rider.

The horse's galloping seemed to slow as it approached, finally coming to a halt about ten metres away from them. The horse was taller than a normal horse and the rider in red seemed also to tower above them. But when she glanced at Harry, he too now seemed taller, more savage, more warlike, almost.

At the rider's bidding, the white horse trotted towards them. Now they could make out the rider more clearly. His face was grey-white, but not the greyness she could see in Harry's face. This was a pallor that came from great age, or a lack of blood. The sense of age was reinforced by the long, straggly grey beard that hung down from the face. The eyes were keen, but cold. The horse and rider drew up alongside them. Sitting up solemnly in his saddle, the rider seemed to veer towards Hermione, looming over her almost.

'You should not be here,' he said in an ominous, but strangely soft voice. 'You are trespassing.'

'Is that right?' said Hermione curtly. The rider's eyes flashed in an annoyance.

'You know you are trespassing,' he continued in the same low voice. 'These lands belong to my master.'

'Who is your master?' said Hermione.

In reply the rider seemed to snort in derision.

'You know who my master is,' he said. 'He has seen you before. Now he sees you wandering freely in this place. And those who wander here soon perish.'

_The Grey Man_. Suddenly Hermione could see him in her mind, towering over her as he had done that night at Puke Brook. She made no reply, but the sensation of fear seemed to register with the rider, who smiled thinly, as if approving it.

'These are hunting grounds,' he continued, his voice suddenly louder. 'If my master rides out to hunt, you will surely be hunted down.'

_And devoured_. The words weren't spoken by the rider, but they presented themselves in Hermione's mind.

Suddenly Hermione heard laughter. For a moment she thought the rider was laughing, but the laughter struck her as altogether more wholesome. It was Harry who was laughing. Now he addressed the rider, looking at him scornfully.

'Your master will stay at home,' he replied, with utter certainty. 'He fears the dead above all things, and if he comes here, the dead will devour him. I dare you to touch her. If you do, you too will be devoured.'

For a moment the emissary seemed somewhat dismayed.

'You are hurrying to join them,' he replied, quickly regaining his composure. 'One of you is as good as dead already. And we shall quicken the other's path'

'You speak so casually of the dead,' said Harry in a clear voice. He seemed to tower over the rider, who turned his head away, his horse veering away in response. 'But the dead remember you. They see you and hear you. They can smell the stench of your soul. They're thronging at the entrance already.'

At the rider's bidding, the horse turned suddenly and began to canter away.

'You were warned!' the rider shouted as he disappeared down the avenue.

Hermione reached out instinctively to touch Harry on the arm but checked the gesture, leaving her hand groping in mid-air, while she tried to ascertain whether he was still in a changed state. As he turned to her, he seemed perfectly normal, or as normal as he could be in that place. More than anything else, the rider's appearance and warning seemed to have vaguely amused him.

'You ok?' he said to Hermione, looking at her with a concerned expression. She was obviously looking a bit unnerved.

'I'm fine,' she replied quickly.

'They won't touch us,' he said to her. His tone was almost off-hand, nothing like the ominous certainty with which he had addressed the rider.

'They?'

'Him and the rest of them.'

'Do you know them?'

'Not really. But I feel their fear. Because of the way he flinched away from me.'

_Like Mr Zurabian did_.

'He flinched away from the dead,' Hermione murmured.

'Yes, he fears them,' Harry confirmed. He was strangely serene.

'But you're not dead …' said Hermione. The statement came out as more of a question than she had intended.

'No,' he said wistfully. 'But …'

'But what?'

'Well, when the rider came near, it was like the …' He stopped for a moment, trying to formulate his sentence just right. 'It was like their anger was speaking through me. Their victims' anger. They want a reckoning.'

They walked on in silence under the trees. Through the breaks in the canopy the sky was red and unchanging. In that place the sun was an illusion, so where the light came from was unclear. They always followed the same direction, leaving the ominous clearing far behind them, Harry focused on a route he seemed to know instinctively. At last they found themselves passing through the last line of trees and emerging into the landscape that lay beyond it. The first thing they saw was the sky in all its vastness, stretching from horizon to horizon, predominantly blood red, tinged with dust browns and dirty pinks, and slowly but incessantly pulsing and churning. Below it, every kind of terrain and topography seemed to be represented: plains, splintered ridges, meandering rivers and vast lakes, grass-covered hills, even mountains. And built on top of them, around them, mingling with them were millions of buildings, as if they were looking down on a single city that covered the entire horizon, with wooden shacks next to strange sandstone skyscrapers, all apparently half-built, _still_ _building themselves_. And rising above it all, in complete contrast to the ramshackle heterogeneity of the great city, stood the vast perforated cupola, with smooth walls that looked a hundred feet wide. Here was all that Hermione had turned away from in the field, stretching out under the red sky.


	72. The penitence of Lillian Herrick - Ch 25

25\. The scriptorium

'Harry?'

Hermione reached out her hand and touched Harry lightly on the cheek. He stood before her in profile, his gaze fixed on the horizon. His cheek was pale, slightly grey, somehow indistinct. Part of her reason for touching him was to make sure that he was still there.

He turned swiftly to face her, only for a moment she wasn't sure that his eyes were focusing on her. His eyes, normally so bright, were just as indistinct. Yet unerringly and unceasingly, he was leading them towards the cupola that towered into the red sky.

Now the eyes focused on her, and he smiled. It was a warm, nostalgic smile, as if he was greeting an old friend he hadn't seen for years. He reached out for her hand and clasped it in his. Surprisingly his hand was warm, not cold. With her free hand, Hermione reached out and stroked his hand where it wrapped around hers.

'We're getting nearer,' she said in a low voice.

'We are,' he murmured in reply.

The only possible yardstick was the great cupola itself, which loomed inexorably higher as they drew closer to it. From the ground it was hard to get any sense of the distance travelled, as Harry led them on an interminable maze of streets through what seemed like some kind of vast low-rise sprawl of suburbs completely void of anything like urban planning. Nor was there any way to measure the passing of time. The sky seemed to change from night to day, from grey clouds to searing sunshine from block to block, from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, if they could be called that. Hermione had started to count how many times she saw the moon come out, but quickly gave up. She refused to believe that a day passed every time the moon or sun rose above them. And as they walked, they played a memory game: Hermione would say the name of someone from their past, and they would take turns to say what they remembered about that person. _Oliver Wood. Mafalda Hopkirk. Madam Pomfrey. Penelope Clearwater. Demelza Robins._

Harry's gaze rose over the ragged rooflines and up at the cupola. He looked at Hermione and smiled.

'No morning,' he said. She looked at him quizzically for a moment. _That's right, there are no mornings here_. Then she understood what he meant.

'It's hard not to,' she replied after a brief pause.

'I know,' he replied. His voice was serene, almost to the point where it sounded sedated. She looked at him, trying to see him, so to speak. It was as if a thin, grey gauze lay over him.

'Are you coming with me?' he asked.

'You know I am,' she replied.

Hand in hand, they set off again. The path between the houses turned left and right, sometimes shifting slightly as an individual house juddered on its foundations, moving outwards or upwards, sprouting an extra floor or a balcony-like protuberance. _Xenophilius Lovegood. John Dawlish. Professor Sprout. Percy Weasley._ As they passed one house, dense undergrowth suddenly started to flourish haphazardly in its garden. The path seemed to move quicker and quicker under their feet, and Hermione struggled to structure her thoughts, to make a plan, to think of what to do, what to say to Harry when they reached their destination. _His destination. No, our destination. _And all the way, he led her on, his eyes fixed on the cupola.

Eventually the maze of streets ended and they came out into an open expanse of scrubland. At least that was what she thought to call it: when she kicked her shoe into the ground, it threw up a little cloud of dust. 'Goodness only knows what this dust is made of,' she murmured, more to herself than to Harry. But he didn't reply. Suddenly his grip on her hand was much tighter, making her look up. The way was open to the great gate below the cupola, across a last expanse of dust and twisted rubble.

'We're nearly there.' His eyes were gentler and his voice was softer.

They walked swiftly across the dust and rubble-strewn plain that separated them from the gate. She fixed her gaze on the great gate and let him guide her towards it. Any sense of dread about what might happen beyond the gate had left her. The only feeling that remained was the touch of his hand, which seemed to impart a kind of tranquil numbness.

Now they were so close that the gate loomed above them, twenty metres high. It seemed to be made of a dark-coloured wood that was perfectly smooth, unblemished by the passing of time, which presumably didn't pass there anyway.

'Will it open this time?' Hermione murmured as she ran her finger along the surface of the gate.

'Of course,' replied Harry. _It's strange. I'm the one who's been here before, but he's the one guiding us._ And he put his hand on the carved metal handle and pressed down on it. The handle yielded to his touch and the doors swung slowly and silently open.

It was as it had been that night when Rachel had taken her inside: a long, straight corridor stretching off into the dim light of the distance. It was unnerving in its familiarity, like rediscovering a particularly vivid dream. The corridor was lined with bookshelves, each filled with identical leather-bound volumes, floor upon floor, all the way up to the ceiling that arched above them like that of a cathedral. Further corridors branched off left and right, similarly lined from floor to ceiling with bookshelves and seemingly following the circular line of the walls.

'Somehow it reminds me of the Department of Mysteries, only much bigger,' she remarked when she found that she could speak again. At once she regretted her words, which she acknowledged as a foolish attempt to puncture the sense of awe she felt inside the building. The sense of awe was accompanied by a feeling that she couldn't quite name. It wasn't dread, although the place was foreboding. It was more a feeling of exposure, but more than exposure. She felt like she was being picked apart, down to the very last cell of her being.

'What's the Department of Mysteries?' replied Harry in a distant voice.

His question startled her, scared her even, but she realised that there was no point in trying to explain. He was too focused on what lay ahead of him.

'Do you remember the waking world here?'

He smiled.

'I remember it, but it seems very remote. And sort of dim.'

She looked down the corridor in front of them and then from side to side at the corridors disappearing into darkness to the left and the right.

'In a way, the waking world is contained within all these books,' she remarked.

'Yes, it is,' he replied.

'I suppose we go forward,' she murmured.

'Yes, we do,' he replied.

They began to walk down the central corridor, the packed bookshelves looming over them on both sides. As they walked, she glanced at the volumes nearest to her, to see if they were marked with anything. But their covers seemed blank. She stopped in front of a random shelf, the temptation to try and look inside one of the volumes too great to resist. He stood silently at her side as she reached out to the nearest shelf. The books were tightly packed, but the volume she reached out for yielded to her touch and slid off the shelf. The book cover was warm, surprisingly warm. As she opened the book at a random page she could feel a sort of void in her stomach.

'_I bumped into Jocasta in the corridor. Heels too high, skirt too short, horrible patent leather handbag with a gold-effect chain, I thought she had more taste than that …_'

The image flashed into her mind, the memory it corresponded to all too real. Feeling her face flush in shame, she quickly turned to another page.

'_Harry is trying so hard to ignore me that it must be completely obvious to everyone in the room. Come on, Harry, be a bit more subtle, for goodness sake! Ginny's looking at you really weirdly! Now she's looking at …_'

She quickly put the book back on the shelf and pulled out another.

'_98% certain Harry won't be there, of course. It's only reasonable that he should be more and more distant. This was bound to happen. Sometimes I think I've made a terrible …_'

She reached up to a higher shelf and took down a third volume.

'_Ron wants to know why I won't …_'

She flicked through to the last page.

'_My bones ache. Maybe I have some kind of disease_.'

She put the book back and stepped away from the shelf. She touched her cheek: it was burning. She looked up at the shelves towering above her then looked over her shoulder at the shelves on the other side of the corridor. _Could it really be that they're all filled with my thoughts and feelings_? An idea came to her.

'Harry,' she said, touching his arm. 'Did you try looking in these books?'

'No,' he said vaguely after a long pause.

'Aren't you curious to see what's in them?'

'Not really.'

'Just try,' she said, looking insistently right into his eyes, searching for a flicker of him there. 'For me.'

He looked at her oddly for a moment, as if her request puzzled him. Then something seemed to stir in his gaze and he reached out to the shelf, taking down one of the volumes that she herself had just opened.

'What do you see there?' she said, not wanting to look over his shoulder at the page that was open.

'That's odd,' he said then began to read out loud.

'_I'm sitting in Kingsley's office and he's telling me something important, something about the power struggle that's building in the Ministry. I know he's relying on me, but I can barely hear him. I can hardly make out the details of his office. The truth is I scarcely know where I am, or what I'm doing here. I've taken a wrong turn somewhere and don't know the way back_.'

He looked up from the book.

'The waking world,' he said plainly, then smiled at her.

She returned his smile.

'Isn't it worth going back to?'

Harry put the book back on the shelf.

'No,' he said. 'It's time I let all this go.'

She looked at him with a piercing expression.

'If you let everything go, that includes me.'

'Some things will never leave me,' he said, darkness welling up in his eyes, as if he were about to start crying black tears. 'You'll see, Hermione. You won't lose me and I won't lose you. You'll like dying, I promise you. You're so tired of life, I can see that so clearly in you. You need to rest. We can rest forever.'

'I don't know, Harry,' she said, her breath scarcely stealing out of her mouth.

'Come with me now,' he said more insistently. He took her by the hand again and led her on down the corridor. She put up no resistance, the promise of rest already seeming to numb her limbs.

The corridor continued in a straight line for a distance and time that she couldn't fathom or measure. They went past column after column of books, but for all she could tell, they could have been the same ones repeating over and over. Then the corridor ended without warning.

They were in a vast, perfectly circular open space, like an arena. The light that shone down on them was perforated, mirroring the countless perforations in the dome. The circular walls that rose above the bookshelves were bare brick.

The central circle was enclosed on all sides by towering bookshelves like those they had passed on their way to the centre. Other corridors cut into the bookshelves at regular intervals, disappearing away into the darkness, perhaps leading to other gates like the one they passed through. And at the very centre of the arena was yet another circle: something like a pillar, only much broader, with curving stone walls rising up to the highest point of the dome. From where they were standing, Hermione could make out three different doors at regular intervals at the base of the circle.

'We have to go in there, do we?' she asked.

'That way leads to the stairs,' Harry replied.

'But which door?'

'Let's look.'

They went around the circular structure, passing door after door. Hermione counted them as they passed.

'I suppose there are seven doors,' she remarked.

'Yes, seven,' said Harry.

Before the fifth door she stopped. A stone tablet was mounted in the wall above it, unlike all the other doors, which were unmarked. The tablet was inscribed with an image she had seen ten thousand times before: the Seven-pointed Circle.

'Could it be this one?' asked Hermione. 'Or could this be one of her traps or jokes?'

'There are no traps or jokes here,' Harry replied. 'This is the door.'

He reached forward and pushed on it. It yielded, releasing a blast of chill air. Behind the door was a narrow opening, seemingly carved into stone, with stone spiral steps leading downwards. She took a deep breath.

'I take it those aren't the stairs in darkness,' she remarked.

'No,' Harry replied. She had thought as much: she felt certain she would know when they came face to face with those.

Harry led the way down the stone steps. After seven turns, the staircase opened out into another stone-bound chamber, with a low-hanging arch at each end. A flickering light emanated from under the left-hand arch. Beyond the right-hand arch lay total darkness. _It was no coincidence I thought of the Department of Mysteries._ She felt the same feeling she had once felt before the strange portal that stood there. And now she could hear indistinct whispers coming from the darkness.

'Do you hear voices?' she asked.

'Yes,' said Harry, straining towards the dark opening. 'From beyond the archway.'

She gripped his hand, as if he were about to pull away from her. But he didn't move. She looked towards the other archway, where a light flickered.

'What's through there? I can see light there.'

'It's not that way that we have to go,' Harry replied. 'Come and listen to the voices. Maybe we'll hear someone we know.'

They went together to the dark archway. Stone steps led downwards, only the first few visible. _Stairs into darkness. _This close to the door, the whispering voices were louder but still mostly indiscernible, although sometimes she thought she could make out names being spoken.

'No one I know,' Harry murmured, lost in contemplation of the doorway. 'What about you?'

'No, no one,' she replied.

'It's probably a good thing,' he replied. 'It must mean they're at peace. The door holds no attraction for them. The voices here are troubled, angry. They're not for us.'

_How much more he sees than I do. How much closer he is to them than I am, than anyone in the Circle, even Lillian herself._ _Lillian daren't come here. But maybe she meant for me to come here._ She was right at the centre of the Circle, in a place not described anywhere in all that she had read. _There's more than silence at the Circle's centre. It seems the dead come here; it must be possible to speak to them, but for what purpose?_

'Harry, I have to understand what's at the centre of the Circle,' she said, giving his hand a squeeze.

He glanced at her and smiled.

'I understand,' he replied. 'After all that time spent mastering it, it's natural you would want to know. You have to go through the other archway.'

'Won't you come with me?' she asked.

'I'll wait for you here,' he replied solemnly.

She glanced into the darkness then looked back at Harry. Still clutching Harry's hand, she raised it and pressed it close to where her heart was.

'You promise you won't go anywhere without me?'

A look that encouraged her shone for an instant in his eyes.

'You know I won't,' he said softly.

'I won't be long,' she said, then turned and went towards the source of the light.

The archway led into a low-ceilinged cave, lit by a small fire of smouldering branches. By the side of the fire stood a young man. He was strikingly gaunt and pale, with a shaven head and dark circles around his eyes, which were still a piercing blue-grey. His parched grey lips shivered, and he looked in pain. His clothing was grey-brown and ragged, the trousers smeared and spattered with blood around the crotch. More than that, a puddle of blood had gathered at his feet on the floor of the cave. A blood-splattered knife hung loosely in his hand. Hermione looked up from the bloody floor and back into his eyes. She recognised the face of the boy who had stood at Lillian's right-hand side. The classmate of Rachel Thirlwell and Justin Pole. _Caleb Priestley_.

'Do you know where you are?' he said.

'At the centre of the circle,' she replied.

'More like the start of the circle,' he replied. 'Let me show you.'

He led Hermione further into the cave. Its back wall was covered completely in inscriptions, carved into the rock. The writing was in a script she had never seen before, but as she looked along the lines of inscriptions, the words of the text sprang into her head.

'_I who am forgotten,_

_who waded through blood,_

_who slaughtered the innocent,_

_I leave behind these words in memory of she who saved me,_

_The one who can save even the most worthless._

_I saw in her face the faces of those on whom I brought down my sword,_

_I felt their terror and agony,_

_Face after face, until a hundred, two hundred, had come from their grave and died again before me and within me. And now even I might be at peace when I am dead and forgotten._

_One good deed I did in life: when our city was taken and everyone fleeing, I freed her from her captors, the usurpers, and brought her here to shelter, to die quietly, to look into her eyes until they closed for the last time._

_Now she has gone, and my time dwindles too. I will write down what I know then go out into the forest, to lie down on her grave and die myself_.'

'This is the place where it was written down,' said Caleb Priestley. 'Everywhere you've walked beneath the red sky, all springs from this place. Blood rained from the sky and made it grow.'

'This is the original testament,' said Hermione breathlessly, hardly daring to believe what her eyes saw. But she couldn't but believe.

'Now do you understand the point of the Circle?' said Caleb. 'Why it was created.'

She read the testament over and over again. She could almost see their faces: the soldier, the butcher of hundreds, and the priestess who saved him by making him relive every death he had caused. Bound together by their experience, they had taken shelter in the cave. It had probably been their tomb.

'She brought them back,' she said without taking her eyes off the inscription. 'She brought back the dead so he could feel their pain, feel what it was like to be killed by him. Helpless before the pain of another.'

'At the centre of the circle lies an emptiness,' he murmured at her back. She turned to look at him. He was smiling a bitter, desolate smile.

'Death, I suppose you mean,' she replied.

He nodded, the smile fading.

'We see it as an emptiness, although that's because it's beyond our perception. From the outside it seems to be silence, but down here we hear countless voices.'

'It's an opening to the dead,' said Hermione.

'A plea to the dead,' Caleb replied. 'A plea for them to show us their suffering. To make us feel their suffering. To show us what it means to die. To make us see the suffering we pretend to inflict on ourselves is a farce.'

She nodded.

'And you know what lies through the other archway, of course?'

She nodded again, this time shivering, even though it was warm in the cave.

'Yes, I know,' she replied.

'Isn't it natural that there should be a pathway to the dead here?' he asked, twisting his sickly face closer to hers. 'Don't you want to pass through it too?'

'I don't know,' she said, glancing over her shoulder in the direction of the other arch.

'_He_ wants to pass through,' said Caleb.

_He's seen Harry of course_. For a moment she wanted to run out of the cave and go back to Harry's side. She hoped he was still waiting for her there.

'You have nothing to live for then?' she asked, changing the subject.

'Only to punish myself, since no one else will. Here I can go on reliving my punishment until my living body finally gives out.'

'I thought you needed to feel as bad as possible to seal the gifts,' Hermione remarked coolly.

'I sealed them too tightly,' he replied grimly. 'The guilt chokes me.'

'This guilt,' said Hermione. 'It must make you very strong in the Circle. Stronger than me. Stronger than Lillian.'

'Yes,' he replied. 'I can't believe my body, such as it is, can still bear it.'

'If you came back with me from here,' she said, 'we could undo a lot of wrongs that have been done.'

He shook his head and winced.

'I'm not interested in whatever Lillian's doing now,' he replied. 'I can't undo the only wrong I care about. So I can't leave.'

'I understand,' said Hermione. 'But I don't think I can do this on my own.'

'Lillian will help you,' he replied. 'In her way.'

'Why would she?'

He pointed with his free hand in the direction of the other archway.

'Over there, among the dead, is the one who is waiting for Lillian. And Lillian wants very dearly to see that person, even though she dreads the meeting more than all things.'

'Who is this person?' said Hermione. 'Do you mean her friend's boyfriend? The one who committed suicide?'

'Not him,' Caleb replied, a desolate sort of a smile on his lips. 'There's another death she has on her conscience.'

'I don't know who you mean,' said Hermione.

Caleb smiled again.

'You'll find out. She waits through there.'

He tilted his head vaguely towards the other archway.

Hermione shivered.

'She?'

'She's the source of the guilt that drives her, that makes her so powerful. The one who will defeat her then free her.'

Hermione looked towards the other archway. _Harry, wait for me there_.

'He wants me to go with him,' she said suddenly, her admission almost coming as a surprise to her.

'I've stood in the same place a thousand times, begging to go through.' Caleb replied. 'To me he doesn't seem so close to death. He just seems tired. He has every reason to live.'

'If he goes,' Hermione continued in the same desperate tone, 'I'll go too.'

'That's up to you. But you don't need to. If you want to reach the dead you just need to go to the centre of the circle. Then you can become their channel to the living. You understand me, Hermione, don't you?'

Hermione nodded. In the cave there was total stillness. In the sound of the flickering flames she thought she could hear a voice. The voice of a dead girl. The voice said two words: '_Lillian Herrick_.'

'I understand,' she said, turning to leave. 'Are you staying here?' she added.

'No,' said Caleb. 'I'll wander the Scriptorium until I have no strength left.'

'Do you go there to read?' Hermione asked.

'Yes,' said Caleb. 'I've got to keep on reading, no matter how excruciating it is. Until the shame annihilates me.'

'I understand,' said Hermione. 'But don't you ever get tired of all this self-contemplation?'

'I'm totally and utterly tired of it,' he replied. 'That's the point. That's part of the punishment.'

_Harry's right not to read it._

'Before you go,' he continued. 'Tell me one thing. You've seen her. How is she?'

'Rachel?' said Hermione. 'She's ok. She's coping.'

She looked at him but he avoided eye contact.

'If you see her again,' he said. 'Just tell her you saw me.'

'Is that all?'

'You've seen what I've become. There's no point saying I'm sorry. She knows I am. I'm made of nothing but remorse.'

'I'll tell her,' Hermione replied.

'I have a question for you too. Was it really worth it, in the end?'

He looked bleakly at her.

'This is a terribly hard road,' he said, wincing at the pain. 'But like with that soldier who lived thousands of years ago, I think it must lead to the right place in the end.'

'Well then,' said Hermione. 'I hope you reach that place.'

He nodded mutely at her. She started to walk away towards the archway.

'Hermione,' he called out suddenly. She turned under the archway and looked at him one last time.

'I'm glad you made it here. I liked meeting you.'

She had no words to say to him, but tried to smile. He did his best to smile back. Then she passed under the archway into the dark vestibule.

Harry was still standing in front of the other archway, staring into the darkness, just as she had left him. He turned to her.

'Ready?' he said in an anodyne voice.

She nodded and he took her hand in his, turning to face the doorway. Together they took a couple of steps forward, so that they were right under the dark archway. The first step downward was just inches from their feet. Then with her free hand she reached out and touched his cheek, holding his gaze fixed on hers.

'I have to tell you something first,' she said.

'Of course.'

'That night you went alone into the forest,' she continued, 'I should have insisted that I go with you.'

'Why would I let them kill you? How on earth could I do that?'

His eyes were greener, his voice more insistent, more vigorous. 'Hermione, I died that night but came back, I had the choice to stay there or come back, and I chose to come back. I came back on a technicality. I don't think many people get to choose. I don't know if you would have been allowed to choose. But if you had been standing there with me on the platform, and I knew you had to stay there, I would have stayed too. What point would there have been for me to come back and try to live with you dead?'

'I know you would have,' said Hermione. 'Wherever we go, we go together.'

He looked under the archway, his brow creased as if he was frowning.

'This time there are no technicalities,' he said. But Hermione shot out her arm and stopped him from advancing.

'Harry, I got it wrong,' she said, fixing his gaze back onto hers and holding him back from the edge. 'Back then I believed that I could live with Ron, but that I should die with you. When we were in the tent I used to think about dying with you all the time. But it wasn't really about dying, it was just about _being_ with you, and if that meant dying with you, that was fine. So if you go down there, I'll come with you, I swear, and we'll die together, like I always imagined we would.'

He started to look into the void again but she drew him back to her again.

'But you don't have to die now, Harry, it's not like that night in the forest. And because you don't _have_ to die, you _shouldn't_. I don't have anything in this world apart from you. You have to come back with me, live with me, stay with me.'

She gripped him by the upper arms, trying to steady their footing on the edge of the first step. Looking for some sign in his face.

'You're exhausted, Hermione,' he said at last. There was genuine compassion in his voice. But the shadow remained. 'You're as tired as I am.'

She leaned her forehead against his and put her arms around his shoulders. _This really is the last_.

'You're right, Harry. I am.'

He put his arms across her back. His grip was hard.

'And you're suffering. I can't bear to see you suffer.'

The knape of his neck was cold against her grasped fingers.

'You know what? I feel like I've hardly begun.'

'I understand.' He gestured towards the empty space beyond the doorway. 'Let's leave here. We can go and lie down in a green place. Where there's no pain and sadness and sighing.'

_Everything's gone. And everything is to come._

'This is a strange place,' she said suddenly, her words soft and low. Harry was silent but attentive. 'I love you so much, Harry. I love you so much that my soul is splitting. I can almost hear the veil tearing. So much so that I think I could make a sort of positive horcrux. Something of that sort would be possible standing here, right on the boundary. And the piece I tear away will fly straight into you. Then we'll go. Go as one.'

She took her arms from around his neck and placed her hands on his chest. His heart seemed to strain through his ribcage, beating sonorously and reaching for her touch.

But instead he reached up and gently lifted her hands off his chest, closing his hands around hers.

'I think I see your soul,' he said. 'It's a beautiful thing. How could it be otherwise? Down here, halfway under the archway, I can feel what it would be like, for you and me to be bound to each other for eternity. It's more tempting than anything I can imagine.'

'Tell me you want it, Harry,' Hermione whispered, 'and I'll let it happen.'

'You're leaving it to me to decide, Hermione. Of course you are. To tell the truth I feel ashamed. If anyone should be giving up a piece of their soul, it should be me. How could I ever equal what you've done for me in all these years, pretty much ever since we've known each other?'

'Harry, it was nothing. It was the easiest thing in the world.'

'But I don't want you to be in a place so insignificant as my soul. You mean so much more to me than I do to myself.'

His eyes were clear green. And the tips of his fingers were warmer already as he brushed away the tears from her cheeks.

'So keep your soul as it is. There's no way you could have given yourself to me more than you already have. So up there, what I have to spend the rest of my life doing is trying — and undoubtedly failing — to be for you what you are to me.'

She lay her head on his shoulder, the remaining strength in her body ebbing away. She felt his arms around her, gripping her tightly, the warmth of his body flooding into hers. Feeling his presence, she began to sob, pressing her face against his shoulder, only to feel his face also wet with tears, his breathing ragged, his chest beating with hers.


	73. The penitence of Lillian Herrick - Ch 26

26\. Northward

Particularly vivid dreams punctuated Imogen's night. At one point she woke up, sitting up in bed and listening intently in the dark. But the darkness was utterly quiet, so she lay back down and drifted off to sleep again.

The same dream seemed to resume once she was asleep again. She was following a winding, lonely road that led up through a forest of evergreens. She presumed she was in a car, because she was moving too quickly and effortlessly up the road to be walking. In the dream she was excited, as if she was on the brink of making some vital breakthrough (although in what she didn't know), but at the same time nervous, almost fearful. The road in the dream seemed to repeat itself: instead of reaching her destination, she would resume the road from the bottom and climb again up through the forested hills. She had lost count how many times she had followed the road when finally she saw a house. It was a lonely and rather shabby farmhouse, hemmed in by trees on all sides. By now it was dark in the dream. The front of the house showed no sign of life, but she started to make her way around it, pushing between thorny bushes and the scarred wall of the house. Then she was looking up at the back of the house, at a single light burning in an upstairs window. As she watched, the light went off. A car pulled up somewhere nearby and switched off its engine. Then she heard voices, men's voices, hidden from sight, but presumably on the other side of the building. The voices were too indistinct for her to make out what they were saying. A door opened and the voices stopped, then that portion of the dream ended. The scene repeated and repeated, and each time Imogen felt a panic take hold of her at the thought that the men would find her. So each time she squeezed herself through the bushes in a kind of frenzy, trying to hide as quickly as possible. Each time the upstairs light was burning, before being switched off as a prelude to the unknown men's arrival.

When she woke up the second time, the name _Pendle House_ kept repeating in her head. She reached blindly around for a paper and pen to write down the name. After that her sleep was dreamless.

'Are you ok?' said Sioned as she and Imogen stood on the platform at the tube station.

'Yes,' said Imogen, looking across at her with a slightly vacant air. 'I was just thinking about this recurring dream I've been having.'

They were waiting for a tube train to take them to a meeting near Portman Square. The Jubilee Line had largely been spared the general mangling of underground around Sorcery Square, making the journey as far as Westminster relatively straightforward. Beyond that, it would have to be a bus or a taxi. The daunting task of repairing weakened tunnels, replacing twisted rails and snapped cabling seemed likely to last almost indefinitely.

'What was it about?' asked Sioned.

'I keep visiting this house up in the hills, somewhere like the Highlands of Scotland maybe, only I don't know what I'm doing there or who I'm supposed to be visiting.'

'Is it scary or nice, the dream?' asked Sioned. The tube train came rattling up alongside the platform.

'I wouldn't quite call it a nightmare,' said Imogen once they had pushed their way into the train and had managed to find a pole to hold onto.

'There are ways of getting rid of bad dreams,' said Sioned cryptically, and Imogen preferred not to question her any further on that point.

'Since this has happened before, I'm guessing that the dream is significant,' said Imogen. She was aware that she was speaking louder than she really wanted to, but hoping that the roar of the tube train was making their conversation at least reasonably private.

'Oh yes, sounds like it,' replied Sioned, without going into any more detail. Imogen wondered whether she had caught sight of someone listening in on their conversation. _Paranoia is usually justified these days_.

'Oh, did you know that Monique's new boyfriend is a film-maker?' said Sioned suddenly, very slightly winking at Imogen.

'That must be nice for her,' replied Imogen with the withering tone she usually reserved for office gossip. Office gossip didn't usually reach her, but that had changed since Sioned had started working with her. 'She likes to be seen with the right kind of people.'

As they went up the steps from the platform, Sioned turned to her and whispered:

'There was someone listening to us in the train. He's just about the get to the ticket barrier.'

They were nearing the top of the steps. Imogen looked up at the ticket barrier. A man with short-cropped hair in a black bomber jacket glanced over his shoulder as he reached the ticket barrier, making eye contact with Imogen for an instant.

'The man in the black jacket?' Imogen hissed to Sioned.

'That's him,' she replied.

'Shall we take a taxi then?' said Imogen. 'Maybe that'll make it harder for him to follow us.'

'Maybe.'

They reached the street and started looking for a taxi.

'Can you still see him?' said Imogen, as she raised her hand to hail a black cab.

'Yes, I saw him for a moment in the shadows,' replied Sioned in a low voice. 'Presumably he knows where we're going.'

'I suppose so,' said Imogen swiftly, shivering as she spoke.

They sat in silence in the back of the black cab. The traffic was heavy and the taxi was making little progress, but they had left early enough not to be too worried about the time. As the taxi ground to a halt in the heavy traffic Imogen had an idea. She reached into her bag and took out a notebook and pen. She tore out a page, scribbled a quick note then handed it to Sioned.

'_In my dream the house I keep getting taken to is called Pendle House_.'

Sioned read the message, paused for a moment, then wrote a reply.

'_I've heard the name. It's the headquarters of the Seven of Sie_.'

As Imogen read the words her heart began to pound. _So_ _the dream did mean something._

'_Those are the people who have Hermione Granger captive_?' she wrote quickly.

'_Yes.'_

'_What are they exactly? A kind of magical organisation?'_

_Yes, but not my kind of magic_.'

'_Why would I dream about them_?' Imogen wrote. The piece of paper had nearly been filled, so Sioned wrote her reply on the back.

'_Don't know. Someone wants to warn you about them, or they're trying to contact you themselves_.'

'_Are they good or bad_?'

'_Bad, I think_. _But definitely weird_.'

Imogen shuddered.

'_Why weird_?'

'_Can't remember exactly. Sort of twisted._'

They had run out of space on the paper. Imogen looked quizzically at Sioned but said nothing. Even though the taxi driver probably had nothing to do with Mr Morley or Mr Marchelow, she preferred not to take the risk.

* * *

'My brother wants to speak to you.'

The statement, which seemed to come out of nowhere, took Ron by surprise. The voice that had spoken it seemed to have come from the last copse of trees before the McAuliffe house. By the time Ron had turned around, Beth McAuliffe already had her wand trained on the speaker. Enid Blackledge was standing calmly under a fir tree, indifferent to the wand pointed at her. She hadn't even bothered to draw hers.

'Oh. You, is it?' said Ron.

'Nice to see you too,' replied Enid with a smirk. 'So are you available to speak with my brother?'

'Ok. When?'

'Now.'

Ron glanced at Beth, who shrugged in reply.

'He only mentioned you,' Enid added.

'And did he mention what was so important?' Ron asked peevishly.

'He has something to show you.'

Ron looked at Beth again.

'Go on,' she replied warmly. 'I'm going to go and see Mum.'

'Ok,' he replied. 'I'll see you in a bit.'

She nodded and smiled, then headed out into the sunlight. Ron shot Enid a withering expression then followed her out of the copse.

'I suppose it's important,' he added as they approached the whitewashed cottage where Enid and Tobias were staying. He hoped it was something important. He was starting to feel impatient at the lack of activity.

'It's definitely important,' Enid replied.

'Come in,' came Tobias's voice from behind his bedroom door. Enid stood to one side, letting Ron enter the room first. When he saw who was sitting at the small wooden table, a mug of tea in his hand, his jaw nearly dropped to the floor.

'All right Ron?' said Neville Longbottom warmly, half rising from his seat, a broad grin filling his features. He looked somewhat different when Ron had last seen him, which, Ron remembered with a cringe, had been the afternoon he had summoned everyone to Chase End to confront Hermione. Neville now had a tanned, outdoorsy look and rather long, unkempt and oddly cut hair.

'Who's been cutting your hair, Hagrid?' said Ron, trying to sound as jovial as possible.

'That's exactly who's been cutting my hair,' replied Neville with a grin. 'I don't recommend him as a barber.'

Ron strode across the room and shook Neville's hand.

'Sorry if I don't get up,' said Neville. 'I'm knackered. Been walking since dawn.'

'What are you doing _here_?' asked Ron, with a sideways glance at Tobias, who was sitting quietly at the little table, looking rather pleased with himself.

'I was in a pub in Dumbarton,' Neville began, rather cryptically, 'when a wizard walked in. I knew he was a wizard because I'd seen him somewhere before, though I wasn't sure where from. Turned out to be one of those Citadel people, but I figured he would be worth talking to anyway.'

'What was his name?' asked Ron suspiciously.

'Stanislas Pizzuoli. Ever heard of him?'

'Yeah, I've heard of him,' Ron replied.

'Well, he really grabbed my attention when he told me he knew where a bunch of wizards were living, including you, of all people. He gave me this address. Said you'd have some interesting news for me. So here I am.'

'So I see,' said Ron. 'Where did you go after Hogwarts …?'

'I've been everywhere,' replied Neville. 'Up and down the country, meeting wizards whenever I can. But I've been mostly based out of Hagrid's hut in the Forbidden Forest.'

'Really?' said Ron. 'I thought everyone fled Hogwarts.'

'Oh, we've kept a skeleton staff on there,' replied Neville. 'Me, McGonagall and Hagrid.'

'What, the three of you in Hagrid's hut?'

The image seemed too preposterous to conceive of.

'Well, McGonagall stays mainly inside the school.'

'Inside the school?'

'That's right,' said Neville. 'There's a rational explanation for it. Well, a magical explanation actually.'

'It's very interesting actually, the explanation,' Tobias piped up, a broad grin on his face. 'I think the time has come for a trip to Hogwarts.'

* * *

Imogen closed the front door behind her, kicked off her shoes and dumped her bag off her shoulder onto the floor. For a few moments she didn't bother to switch on the light in the hall. She rubbed her shoulder, which was sore from where the strap of her bag had been digging into it. She had stuffed a stack of files into her bag before leaving the office in the intention of looking over them that evening. She had left the office early, feeling too drained to last much beyond five o'clock. As a result, she was on her own in the flat — Lorna's job was too high powered for her to be home much before eight, and she often went for drinks after work anyway.

Once inside the living room she went straight to the window and peered around the net curtain. A car passed slowly in front of her building but didn't stop. Otherwise the square was empty. Lights were starting to come on in the buildings on the other side and a vague sort of rain was falling, leaving a sparse pattern on the glass. She was about to go and get changed when she heard a rustling sound behind her, seemingly coming from the direction of the table. She turned and went towards the table. A map lay stretched out on it. She had never seen it before. She felt instantly nervous. Who had been in her flat? Were they still there? _Did a draught make it rustle like that_? The other option, increasingly plausible those days, was that the map was magic and had rustled of its own accord. She went to the window, lifted the curtain again and made a rapid hand signal. Then she went and sat down on the sofa at what she considered was a safe distance from the map, and waited.

Two minutes later there was a knock at the front door. She leapt up from the sofa and went quickly to the door. Standing outside was Meredith Dulse: she was obviously on duty that day.

'Has something happened?' Meredith asked, her eyes wide in the gloom of the hall.

'Yes! A mysterious object just appeared in my living room!' Imogen replied in a loud whisper.

'I'd better come in,' said Meredith, stepping over the threshold.

'What kind of object?' she asked as they walked back down the hall.

'A map,' replied Imogen.

'A map of what?'

'Didn't look at it too closely yet.'

'That's probably wise.'

'You didn't send it then?'

'No, we didn't.'

'It isn't possible … I mean, a magical map couldn't trap you inside it or something if you touched it, could it?' Imogen asked.

Meredith looked quizzically at her.

'Don't know. I've never heard of such a thing. But a lot of things are possible when it comes to magic.'

'That's what I thought.'

The two of them leaned over the map. It was hand drawn in ink, annotated in neat, elegant handwriting.

'Don't know any of these place names,' Meredith murmured. 'Hang on, here's Hogwarts'.

'I've heard of that all right,' said Imogen.

She scanned the area around the school, her heart suddenly lurching in her chest when she came across the words 'Pendle House'.

'Look here!' she said, without taking her eyes off the map.

'Ahah!' said Meredith as she saw what Imogen was pointing to.

As they looked, fresh writing suddenly began to appear on the page in the same hand as the rest of the map, just below where it was marked 'Pendle House'. The new words read: '_The Witchfinder's downfall_.'

Suddenly Meredith reached out her hand and ran it over the surface of the map.

'Is that a good idea?' said Imogen.

'It's just that this doesn't feel like a magical object to me,' Meredith replied.

'Doesn't feel like magic?' said Imogen, rather doubtfully.

'I mean, magical objects have a kind of feel to them. You can usually tell them from a normal object. At least you can if you're a witch.'

'So this is a normal map?'

Meredith pursed her lips.

'It's not that either. There's something weird about it. It's just not magic, or not the kind of magic I know. But it could be the kind of magic they do at Pendle House,' she added, pointing to the spot on the map where the house was marked, seemingly just a few miles from Hogwarts.

'By the Witchfinder I suppose they mean Mr Morley,' said Imogen. 'But what have these Seven of Sie people got to do with him?''

'I don't know,' said Meredith. 'The only link I can think of is Hermione Granger. The Seven of Sie supposedly have her and Mr Morley wants her.'

Imogen peered at the map again.

'Do you suppose this is an invitation?'

'An invitation?!' Meredith exclaimed. 'Who from? Lillian Herrick herself? That's not the sort of invitation I'd be very keen to accept.'

Imogen chewed her lower lip.

'But maybe I'll have to. And now I have a map, so I've got no excuse not to go there.'

'Are you sure that's a good idea?' said Meredith. 'Don't you think it looks a lot like a trap?'

'Maybe,' said Imogen. 'But I plan to take some back-up with me.'

* * *

Ron smiled as he watched his mother and father, sister and two of his brothers follow the same path through the trees that he had been led along on his first night in the Rhinns. Beth had gone herself to the station to escort them personally. She was in conversation with Ron's mother, who was explaining something to her in a friendly, animated way.

'Hello!' Ron shouted. Several excited waves came his way in reply.

He received a warm embrace from his mother and Ginny, and a hearty handshake from his father, George and Percy. As they walked down towards the loch, Ginny elbowed Ron in a friendly manner and winked at him when he looked over. Realising what she was getting at, he smiled back in a way that he hoped wasn't too sheepish. His mother wasn't quite so subtle, locking her arm in his and saying in a loud whisper 'What a lovely girl she is!' He wanted to say something like 'she's not my girlfriend or anything,' but instead limited himself to saying, 'yeah, she is.'

While the reunion between Neville and the Weasleys was warm and noisy, the family was more subdued for their first meeting with the McAuliffes. Their greeting of Tobias and Enid was distinctly cool. Mr Weasley was able to give Tobias and Ron an account of the movements of various wizards who were on their way up to the Rhinns in answer to the messages sent out looking for volunteers to move on Hogwarts. The reply from Argenta Coyle was that a contingent was expected from the Coven of the White Tooth, led by Caius Hanmer. Ron still didn't like him, but had to admit he was handy with a wand. Most of the residents of Lightfoot House were also on their way up, including Draco Malfoy, a bunch of Belhaine supporters, Carmody, Hinks, Argenta Coyle, Julia Massey and Will Gash from the Ministry. The Cradocks, not being known for their fighting skills, had stayed behind. Ron noted that none of the Tourniers were making the trip up either, even though some of them were known for their fighting prowess. He wasn't overly surprised though. They couldn't be seen to be getting involved with something so potentially messy at what they were going to attempt.

The rest of the residents of Lightfoot House arrived the following day, and the Coven of the White Tooth on the evening of the same day. Being far too numerous to be housed in one place, the wizards were quietly distributed around the peninsula. At Ron's suggestion, Draco ended up staying with the odd little wizard called Pelham. In any case, no one would be staying long: everything was almost in place for departure.

Ron, Beth, Neville, George and Ginny managed to walk out to a pub for a drink one night, where Neville regaled them with tales of his journeys up and down the country meeting undercover wizards, not to mention life in Hagrid's hut. _I've got used to sleeping in a space about six foot by three foot, with cooked meats and pheasants hanging above my head,_ Neville explained. _It can get a bit pungent in there, but at least I'm pretty much out of earshot of Hagrid's snoring. After that, I feel like I can put up with anything._

Rather to Ron's surprise, it was his plan to reopen Hogwarts as a school that they were going with. Or a version of it: they would enter the school, capture its guards and then announce to the world that Hogwarts was open again for business and ready to accept pupils, even muggle pupils who simply wished to learn about magic (that particular touch had been Beth's idea). Malfoy and the Destruments had protested at the idea, but had agreed to go along with it for now. Presumably the prospect of taking back Hogwarts from the muggles made them ready to accept even that abomination. The general enthusiasm for the plan had been boosted by Neville's news that an undetected magical method of entering the castle still existed: if they could sneak in, they could sneak out again if things went wrong. The plan had one more argument in its favour: as Ginny put it, who is going to attack people trying to open a school?

* * *

From where she was standing Imogen could watch the rain as it was buffeted about outside the archway. An endless stream of traffic was squeezing itself round the corner, and beyond she could see Nelson's Column and Admiralty Arch under a heavy grey sky. She had pressed herself almost up against the glass of the shop front to stay out of the way of the throng of people cutting through the passage to get out of the rain. A rather lurid and complicated window display at her back was thankfully shielding the sight of her from the people in the shop. _Is this really the best place to meet?_

Maybe it was. She knew that she had been followed from her office. _Someone's always following me. But I almost don't care by now._ She had ostensibly gone out to get a sandwich for lunch. If anyone from the office had seen her heading into the underground they would have wondered just where she was getting her sandwich from.

'In this weather?' Keely in reception had asked her, wide-eyed behind too much mascara and eyeliner.

'Oh it'll be fine, I've got an umbrella,' Imogen had said, holding up a flimsy fold-up umbrella as evidence.

'It's blowing a gale out there,' Keely continued. 'Do you think your umbrella will survive?'

'Um … if it's too windy I won't put it up.'

'Then you'll get wet.'

'Err … it's a risk I'll have to take. I'm starving.'

She wondered, not for the first time, whether any of the people in her office were spies of Mr Marchelow. Although she didn't think Keely was a likely candidate. She was just naturally nosy.

She glanced around the people taking shelter from the rain to see if she could identify the person tailing her. The random collection of tourists, office workers and what looked like half a school trip didn't seem to be paying much attention to her, but maybe that was the point. At the same time, because the arcade she was standing under was curved, she couldn't see all the way round both sides.

Out of nowhere someone touched her on the arm, making her jump. She looked around hastily. A pale girl with glasses and long dark hair was standing next to her. She was wearing a leather jacket and jeans and had a large teal blue scarf wrapped around her neck. The girl looked vaguely familiar.

'The short guy with the thick lips and blue suit is the one who's been keeping tabs on you,' hissed the girl, squeezing Imogen on the arm as she spoke.

Imogen glanced around, spotting a man fitting that description standing a few metres away. He was speaking quickly into his mobile phone, seemingly rather angry at someone.

'He's not very happy because he thinks he's lost you,' the girl added in a rather amused tone of voice.

'He's right in front of us,' said Imogen. 'How is that possible?'

'Because at the moment he's seeing what I want him to see,' the girl replied. 'And he'll stay that way until I've finished with him. I'm Rachel by the way.'

'Haven't we met before?' asked Imogen.

'Yes,' said Rachel. 'After that wizard battle in the warehouse.'

Now Imogen recognised her.

'Oh yes, I remember,' she said. 'Surely you're not using magic, are you?' she added.

'It's the kind of magic they use up at Pendle House,' Rachel replied, her eyes glinting.

'You've been there?' Imogen exclaimed.

'I used to go there a lot,' Rachel replied.

'Are you going to take me there?' said Imogen.

There was a strange sort of expression on Rachel's face.

'Put it this way: you'll need some help to get in there. Unless Lillian's just going to open the front door to you. Or particularly if that's what she does.'

Just then Caius Hanmer stepped under the arch, together with an older man Imogen also recognised from the aftermath of the wizard battle in Unham. She glanced again at the man who was supposed to be following her. He was still speaking on his mobile phone, apparently oblivious to her presence.

'Clever what she can do, isn't it?' said Caius to Imogen, winking at her as he gestured towards Rachel. Rachel said nothing.

'Fortunately untraceable too,' said his companion, whom Caius quickly introduced as Isaac Edwards.

'Isaac and Rachel will go with you to Pendle House,' Caius explained.

'Oh, you're not coming?' said Imogen.

'I have something else to do,' Caius replied. 'And anyway, I don't think I'd be much use. Rachel and Isaac know much more about it than I do.'

'Rachel especially,' said Isaac.

'Yes,' Imogen replied, rather nonplussed. 'She told me she's been there a lot.'

'Usually the only people who go there are people who have been initiated into the Circle,' added Isaac. 'So if there's any danger, the hope is that Rachel can get you out of there.'

'Hopefully,' added Rachel darkly.

'You think it's that dangerous then?' said Imogen.

'Depends on who invited you,' said Rachel.

'Still, I can't not go,' said Imogen. 'The map offered me the prospect of a certain person's downfall there.'

'You can say his name, no one will hear you,' Rachel commented.

'Mr Morley's downfall then,' said Imogen. 'Whatever that means, I have to look into it.'

'And you might meet Hermione Granger there as well,' added Caius. 'That's really important too.'

'I'll …uh … look out for her,' said Imogen. 'I know what she looks like. There's a file on her at work.'

'No surprises there,' remarked Isaac.

'What should I do if I meet her?' Imogen asked.

'Good question,' said Isaac. 'I don't think anyone knows the answer. She may be beyond influence.'

'I think that if she sees you, she'll know what to do,' said Rachel. _That sounds a bit worrying_. Still, her voice was soft but confident.

'What does that mean?' Imogen asked.

'She's inside the Circle,' said Rachel. 'She'll know what you're doing there.'

'It might even have been Hermione who contacted you through the map,' said Caius.

Isaac looked dubious.

'What do you think, Rachel?' he said, looking at the girl. She looked pensively at him but didn't reply.

'Can't tell,' she said at last. 'Really I can't. I'm sure you were contacted through the Circle, but that's all.'

'Ok,' said Imogen. 'It doesn't matter. I still have to go. It's just a question of when.'

'In about an hour, if that's alright with you,' said Isaac.

'About an hour? But I've got to …'

'You've got the all-clear to leave work,' said Caius, giving her a knowing expression. 'We'll pick you up from home, if that's all right.'

'Uh, yes, I suppose so,' said Imogen.

'See you then,' said Isaac.

'Yes, see you later,' added Caius softly. 'And good luck.'

'See you,' said Imogen as they walked away.

'I'll be off now too,' said Rachel. 'Don't worry about the guy following you, by the way. I'll keep him busy.'

'Ok,' said Imogen. 'Thanks.'

'Don't mention it,' said Rachel. Her voice came out in a cool, detached sort of hiss that seemed to mingle with the sound of the rain crashing down beyond the archway.

* * *

The coach driver stood by the open door of his coach, counting the passengers as they disembarked. The coach was the only vehicle in the car park of the lonely roadside pub. He still had 32 passengers, all assembled for a sightseeing and distilleries tour of Speyside. They had been driving most of the day, all the way up from Stranraer.

Even though it was a 'tailor-made' tour, the driver thought the route and stops along the way a little out of the ordinary. The client seemed to have requested more 'wilderness' than actual distillery visits. So far wilderness was pretty much all they were getting: mile after mile of windswept moorland and not a lot else. The place where they had stopped for the night seemed a bit of an odd choice too: it had no particular link to the whisky trade.

Judging by the accents, the passengers mostly came up from down south. A lot of them struck him as a bit young to be into 'whisky tourism'. They didn't seem to have much luggage either. But at least they had a local guide, a tall, attractive girl called Beth. She had been doing all the talking on the way up, pointing out places of interest along the way. Only the passengers didn't seem all that interested so far. In fact they all looked rather bored as they looked out of the window or talked among themselves in low voices.

'So why did you choose this place to stop?' he asked her as they sat round in the lounge of the roadside inn.

'We want to do some wilderness walking tomorrow morning before heading on,' said the girl, making an expansive gesture towards the darkened moorland that stretched out beyond the inn.

'Fair enough,' said the coach driver, who was too tired to question her any further. He could do with something to eat and drink.

'How far are we going to go on this 'wilderness walk'?' asked Draco Malfoy irritably, as he stumbled over an uneven section of track.

'It's only four miles to Hagrid's Hut,' called out Neville, who was out in front, striding briskly over the moorland. Fir trees filled the horizon ahead of them.

'Oh I can't wait to get there …' Malfoy grumbled.

The plan was to regroup at Hagrid's then set off for Hogwarts, following something Neville called 'the Headmaster's footsteps'.

'It'll be good to get under cover of the trees,' added Tobias. 'We're a bit exposed out here.'

Hagrid looked a bit overwhelmed at the sight of 32 wizards gathered around the back of his hut, concealed as best they could behind the first line of trees. There were a few more streaks of grey in his beard and hair, but otherwise he looked more or less the same. To Ron's amazement, Hagrid clapped Caius Hanmer firmly on the back and gave him a friendly wink as he loitered behind a tree.

'How can a Slytherin be in your good books?' Ron muttered to Hagrid by his back door. Fang's wet nose discretely nuzzling the back of his hand had a welcoming, nostalgic feel about it.

'Who? Caius? There's always an exception to the rule,' Hagrid replied. 'Besides, he was able to give me a few brewin' tips.'

'Brewing?' asked Ron, his brow furrowed.

'Oh yeah, he knows some right potent witches' brews.'

'Bet Fang isn't keen on him.'

'Oh him?' said Hagrid looking down at Fang with complacent fondness, 'he knows old Caius from years back. He'll be a familiar smell for him at least. Eyesight not what it was, is it, you old codger?'

Ron decided not to pursue the discussion any further.

'You'll have to keep a low profile,' said Hagrid, trying to gain the attention of the assembled gathering in the quietest loud voice he could muster. 'These safe wizards can't see my house, but they could see you easy enough if you make too much noise. Anyway, it's nice to see so many familiar faces. Now, does anyone need the toilet? Ladies first, of course.'

'Where's McGonagall?' asked Neville, clapping Hagrid on the back as the company reassembled after its mass ablutions.

'McGonagall,' came a severe voice seemingly from out of nowhere, 'is right here, _Mr_ Longbottom.'

Neville and several other wizards wheeled around to see Professor McGonagall descend imperiously from the back step of Hagrid's house. Dressed in her dark and flowing teacher's robes and wearing her customary black hat, she looked ready to address a school assembly.

'Well, what a turnout!' she remarked in a tone that was both withering and rather pleased. 'We shall have to go up to the school in small groups. The enchantment can't be expected to extend to cover all of you at once. Now, has everyone been briefed on what to do?'

They had been briefed.

'We shall go in groups of no more than four. Who are the first four?'

The assembled wizards looked rather sheepishly at one another, as if they had just been invited to the front of the class to demonstrate a particularly tricky transfiguration spell.

Professor McGonagall's gaze fell on Ron.

'Mr Weasley, if you please,' she began. Her lips were pursed and grave but her eyes looked at him warmly. 'Kindly step this way.'

Ron started to shuffle forward. Beth, who was standing next to him, also took a step forward. 'Excuse me, err … Professor McGonagall, is it? I'd like to go with Ron.'

'I don't believe you were ever a student of Hogwarts, were you, Miss …?'

'McAuliffe. Bethesda McAuliffe.'

'I see. Well, Miss McAuliffe, you won't know your way around the school. That may be a disadvantage.'

'I'll vouch for her,' said Ron. 'She'll have no problem.'

'Very well,' said Professor McGonagall, the faintest suggestion of a smile on her lips.

'Who else?'

'Professor McGonagall,' said Tobias Destrument, stepping forward and delivering a sort of bow. 'I didn't attend Hogwarts School either, but this was all sort of my plan, so I was wondering if my sister and I could be among the first to enter.'

'I see,' replied Professor McGonagall, the smile swiftly dismissed from her lips. 'I suppose you would be Tobias Destrument, then.'

'I am,' he replied, bowing again. 'And this is my sister Enid.'

Professor McGonagall glanced witheringly at Enid Blackledge, delivering her a look that Ron interpreted as meaning that she hadn't for one moment failed to notice her.

'Well,' she continued, 'If Mr Weasley can vouch for the two of you too, you had better step forward. Mr Weasley?'

Her gaze was back on Ron.

'Yes, Professor, I'll vouch for them,' Ron replied, shrugging his shoulders as he did.

'Right then, it seems we have our first cohort,' said Professor McGonagall. 'The rest of you will need to organise yourselves into groups of four while I'm escorting Ron Weasley and his friends up to the school. It would be better if at least one person in each team is a former Hogwarts student, although since I recognise most of the faces here, I imagine that won't be a problem.'

She went back up onto the back step of Hagrid's house and scanned the massed ranks as if to make sure that they had understood their instructions. Fang looked up at her reverently from his post not far from the back step. Ron thought he caught a glimpse of her winking back at him.

'I can see that I will be getting rather a lot of exercise this afternoon,' was her final remark to the assembled wizards. 'Now, you four, follow me.'

Ron, Beth, Tobias and Enid fell in behind her and followed her into Hagrid's hut.

'We shall be walking through Hagrid's house and leaving through the front door,' she said as she wheeled around to face them from the threshold. 'I must insist that everyone keep step with me. One step out of line and you will become visible to the usurpers.'

The last word was delivered with particular contempt. Professor McGonagall seemed to be enjoying herself.

A strange trail of glowing footsteps led away from the threshold and away from the house. In single file they made their way up the hill towards the school. It was a journey Ron had made countless times before; suddenly it struck him how much he missed Harry and Hermione. He kept his eyes trained on the back of Professor McGonagall's neck, following her footsteps exactly. There was no movement on the hill, but Ron could make out a few lights on in the school. Up ahead, a sentry stood beneath a stone archway.

'Total and utter silence as we pass him,' hissed Professor McGonagall in a loud whisper from the front of the party.

They trod as lightly as they could as they passed under the arch and past the gaze of the sentry, who seemingly saw nothing. Now the front door of the castle was visible up ahead of them. Suddenly the great door swung open. Professor McGonagall stopped and the four wizards stopped behind her, almost bumping into one another. They stood still, craning their necks towards the gate to see who would emerge and whether the alarm had been raised.

Two men came out of the gate and began to walk quickly towards a car parked in the quadrangle.

'It's Morley!' exclaimed Ron in a loud hiss.

'Should we … do something?' said Beth from behind him.

'We can't without becoming visible to them,' replied Professor McGonagall from the front of the line. By now Mr Morley and the other man had opened the car doors and were getting in.

The wizards watched as the car pulled away. The door to Hogwarts was still ajar, with two sentries talking in low voices in the doorway.

'Now's as good a time as ever,' said Professor McGonagall, suddenly heading off briskly in the direction of the door. The others followed at the same pace, covering the rest of the quadrangle and slipping inside before the door swung shut. Again, the sentries saw nothing. For the first time in years, Ron Weasley was back in the vestibule of Hogwarts.


	74. The penitence of Lillian Herrick - Ch 27

27\. Breath

Hand in hand, they stood on the threshold and looked down the stairs. The voices could still be heard, but now there was no question of stepping over the threshold, of going down to join them in the darkness, or whatever it was that lay down there. A calmness had descended over Hermione, a pleasant tiredness washed through her limbs, even though she knew what she had to do next. She glanced across at Harry. He looked back at her keenly and smiled, at the same time squeezing her hand. A shadow still seemed to cloak him, but now clear light shone from his eyes.

From among the gathered voices she could discern the voice of the girl calling for Lillian. There was anger in the voice, but the anger was somehow more rarefied, more controlled, less urgent than it would have been in someone living.

'I have to do it now,' Hermione said to Harry. 'She has to come to me.'

'Don't be afraid of her,' he said. He had understood almost instinctively what it was she had to do. 'She means you no harm. It's her time for reckoning. She's grateful for what you're doing.'

She nodded, then spoke the incantations again. The red sky was above them, even though they were deep underground. She poured every memory of pain she had inflicted on Ron, on Ginny, on Molly Weasley, out of her and over the threshold, into what lay beyond. Even though she couldn't see her, she knew that the dead girl was standing just beyond the archway, perhaps even on the first step down. The Seven-Pointed Circle lit itself in the darkness before them, an opening large enough for the breath of the dead to pass through. The circle extinguished itself and Hermione stepped away from the door. _She's with me now. I'm her channel to the living_. She looked over at Harry. He touched her arm.

'She won't stay long; she has no will to.'

She nodded to him and swiftly seized his hand.

They went quickly back up the spiral staircase and out into the perforated light under the great dome of the Scriptorium. They didn't linger, passing quickly back down the aisle by which they had entered. As they reached the entrance, Harry turned back and looked up at the towering bookshelves and seemingly endless rows of books that lay behind them in silence.

'I know libraries are your favourite place, Hermione, but this one is doing my head in,' he said. There was a mischievous look in his eyes that she hadn't seen for a very long time. 'I think it must be too much even for you.'

She smiled back at him.

'You know what?' she replied. 'Sometimes ignorance really is bliss.'

They laughed together, the sound of their laughter echoing strangely down the silent aisles.

The great gate opened as easily as when they had entered the Scriptorium. Outside the same dust-ridden expanse surrounded it, and beyond it the ever-shifting silhouettes of buildings in the distance. Their hearts began to beat faster in expectation of finding the enemy waiting for them, but the plain that stretched out before them was empty.

'What now?' said Harry. Hermione paused and looked out at the landscape effortlessly remaking itself over and over in front of them. For the first time she realised that it went through its movements in silence. Under the silence she could hear a sound like someone breathing, but as if they were breathing without air.

'I have to go and see Lillian,' said Hermione. 'I have to leave this place. Can you come with me?'

Harry shook his head.

'I can't. Not yet.'

They looked at each other sadly.

'I thought as much,' said Hermione.

'But now I want to,' Harry replied, touching her cheek. 'Now I have to get back up there, up to the surface as soon as I can. To be with you.'

'But Harry, you know there's a risk that _I_ won't survive this,' said Hermione suddenly.

'Then it's simple,' he replied, looking straight into her eyes. 'We'll still go together.'

'You will not get far,' said a third voice. They turned to look in the direction the voice had come from, their bodies tensing in readiness to fight. Walking cautiously towards them, almost cowering under the curving walls of the Scriptorium, was a tall man in a long crimson cloak. His features were old but at the same time ageless, and his beard was brown and only flecked with grey, but unlike the white-bearded servant of the Grey Man, his face was hale and his gaze keen.

'I am not your enemy,' he said, raising his hand with a placatory gesture. 'Trust me, insofar as you may trust anyone in this place.'

Although Hermione had never seen him before, there was something familiar about his piercing black eyes. In silence they watched him approach.

'Who are you?' asked Hermione. 'And what are you doing here?'

The mysterious man stood in front of them. He glanced up at the walls of the Scriptorium and then fearfully out into the expanse around them.

'It is dangerous to say my true name out here, outside the confines of my house,' he said. 'But no matter. The wheels are set in motion. I have declared myself for you, against him. He has heard your challenge.'

Hermione looked darkly at him.

'You're not the first person here to warn us about him.'

The dark eyes bristled.

'I am not one of his emissaries,' he replied, his voice quick and firm.

'So tell us your name,' Hermione replied.

The man nodded.

'My name is Donatus Poorwill,' he replied.

'Donatus Poorwill?' Hermione exclaimed. The name had been a constant feature as she had tried to master the Circle, his writings her most reliable English-language guide. 'Can it really be you? Although I suppose if there was a place to meet you it would be here. You must be four hundred years old.'

He smiled soberly from behind his beard.

'As you know only too well, a man may linger on here for a very long time. Perhaps too long in my case. But we should not speak of these things here. We must take shelter.'

'He's on his way?' said Hermione, instinctively looking into the red sky.

'He will not attack you here because the dead are too strong in this place. But if you leave here, he will come for you.'

Hermione shivered. But something had changed inside her: now the feeling of fear was mingled with the anger of the dead.

'My house lies in the shadow of this place,' Donatus Poorwill continued, gesturing to a point off around the sweep of the walls.

'Why should we trust you?' said Hermione, hardly managing to control the anger in her voice. 'Even if you are who you say you are?'

She could see the fear on his face. _He fears me like he fears Harry_.

'I gave you an invitation once to visit my house. I repeat that invitation now. I am ready to honour it.'

'What invitation? When?'

The man stared even more closely at them. He seemed to be willing them to look into his eyes.

'You recognised my eyes,' he said in a low voice. 'You've seen them before. However many different faces I weave for myself, my eyes are always the same.'

It was true, she had recognised the eyes. She looked closely at them again. Now she knew where she had last seen them. _Hegarty, the itinerant wizard_. She was just about to speak when Harry spoke instead.

'You're Mr Zurabian,' he said plainly.

The man bowed.

_He's Mr Zurabian as well?_

'That's not your only name,' Hermione added quickly. 'You're Doyle Hegarty too.' The man bowed again.

'If you wish I will give you a list of all the names I have borne throughout my long life,' he said. 'But I would prefer to do it from the safety of my house. I don't suppose you still have the key I once gave you, Miss Granger?'

She shook her head.

'I think I left it behind in Unham.'

'You did,' said the man. 'But I retrieved it for you after you were taken from your house and paraded through the streets.'

He reached into his pocket, produced the key and handed it to her. She looked curiously at it.

'It really is the same one,' she murmured.

'Will you come now?' he reiterated, urgency in his voice.

They followed him around the outside of the Scriptorium. On the far side of the building, perched on a rocky outcrop rising up out of the plain, stood a solitary stone-built keep.

'That is my house,' said Donatus Poorwill.

'It looks more like a castle,' said Harry.

'I have added to it over the centuries,' Poorwill replied.

They followed a twisting, dust-strewn path up the incline to a broad timber door, which swung open as they approached. As they passed under the doorway, they could see that the walls were at least a metre thick. They found themselves in a stone passage like that of a gatehouse, which led to a second door, smaller than the first. The second door also swung open. Beyond it, they emerged back into the open: beneath the tall stone walls stretched a garden of luxuriant foliage and exotic-looking trees, a tree-lined avenue running through its centre. Rising above the treeline was the facade of a grand redbrick house several stories high. The air was cool under the shaded walk that led towards the front door. _Where is my house_? Hermione wondered as they followed Donatus Poorwill under the trees. _I never even thought to look for it_. She started to see an image of a whitewashed cottage on a grass-covered hill, sheep grazing beneath its stone walls. _The sea isn't far_. Then she stopped looking. There was no time to rest.

Once this third door had opened of its own accord they were finally inside the house proper, in a long, timber-vaulted hallway, its stone walls hung with tapestries.

'Are these what you would call original features?' asked Hermione.

'This is a recreation of the house I had built for me centuries ago. It is as it was then.'

He led them along the hall, past a series of closed wooden doors.

'I should tell you that I have one other guest here,' said Poorwill, pausing before the door that lay at the very end of the hall. 'Someone you know.'

Harry and Hermione looked at each other, the idea that a trap had been laid for them occurring to them at just the same time.

'Rest easy,' said Poorwill. 'He means you no harm. He is here simply to rest.'

He opened the door and led them into a richly-decorated but more intimate room lit by an oriel window that evidently looked onto another garden.

'We have guests, my friend,' said Poorwill as he led Harry and Hermione towards the window. Sitting by the window, partly reclining on a long green divan was Gondulph Belhaine. He looked a pale, sickly man, much older than Poorwill, even though he was presumably hundreds of years younger. He turned and nodded slowly to Harry and Hermione.

'Well, what illustrious company,' he said in a thin voice.

Poorwill bid them to sit down at the other end of the divan then seated himself opposite them on a high-backed, throne-like armchair.

'Mr Potter, a pleasure to see you again,' said Belhaine, pulling himself into something more like a sitting position. 'I never got a chance to tell you how much I enjoyed our meeting. The Ministry would have been in good hands with you, I think.'

'My dealings with the Ministry are pretty much over,' Harry replied. 'In fact I'm not in a fit state to have dealings with anything or anyone in the waking world at the moment.'

'I know what happened to you, Mr Potter. I must admit I was worried for you when I heard the news, that terrible night when what we had feared actually happened. But now I see you here with the charming Miss Granger, I feel I can rest easy regarding your fate. Take it from one who is truly dying, Mr Potter, you will return to the waking world soon enough.'

'Thanks,' Harry replied. 'But maybe this place will regenerate you too.'

Belhaine smiled.

'It does me good, there's no doubt. My good friend Donatus was kind enough to extend his hospitality to me when he learned of my present state. And it is as pleasant an antechamber as one could ever wish for. So I am a lucky man: I return to the waking world only to spend time with my family, and otherwise get to spend as much time as possible here, free of pain. It is a rare privilege for someone like me, who does not possess the powers of Donatus, or of you, Miss Granger, to visit this place freely.'

'I'm curious,' Hermione murmured in a slightly distant voice, 'how many of Mr Poorwill's personas have you known?'

'To the best of my knowledge, four,' said Belhaine, a glint of amusement in his eye. 'I have been acquainted with Zurabian, and Hegarty, and in former years with Lady Florence Seawright. And in my youth I was a pupil of J. Brabizon Barrett.'

'You wrote _The Dreaming Mage_ as well?' Hermione exclaimed. Donatus Poorwill bowed slightly in reply.

'You must have lived an extraordinarily large number of lives,' she remarked.

'The list,' he replied, 'is indeed quite long.'

'You could say you use the Circle to cheat death.'

Donatus Poorwill nodded stiffly.

'That is true I suppose.'

A moment of silence passed between them.

'That's one thing you have in common with the Grey Man,' Hermione continued.

Donatus Poorwill glanced around the walls. After a moment his gaze became more tranquil.

'Yes, I can speak of him from in here,' he replied, almost speaking to himself. 'Yes, he cheats death, in a way. He has done it for far longer than I have.'

'How much longer?' asked Harry.

'He is a thousand years old. He crossed the sea from Normandy. He was a powerful overlord, a cruel master and a deadly warrior. He suppressed dissent with brutal force, gathered lands and the spoils of war, piled corpses high.'

'And how did he come across the Seven-Pointed Circle?' Hermione asked.

'I don't know. But it must have been after he parted ways with the rest of humanity, when he first developed his taste for human flesh. He put a Saxon rebel earl to death and then dined off his flesh. After that his men would gather the corpses of enemy soldiers freshly killed in battle and bring them to his table. He led massacres for the purpose of stocking his larders. His deeds were so abominable that his own king ordered his arrest. But he disappeared, into the Circle undoubtedly. And here he has remained for a thousand years, sleeping and waking to hunt. Over the centuries he has gathered followers to him, attracted by his power, attracted by the promise of flesh.'

'And you were one of them?' said Hermione.

'As I told you, I could not take that terrible, blood-soaked path. I fled from them. I lived by stealth in the shadows of this place, until I came here and built my house in the shadow of the great cupola.'

'We will defeat the Grey Man' said Harry suddenly, with cool certainty.

'It would be a great feat,' said Donatus Poorwill.

'The dead demand it,' Harry added.

'That is between you and him and the dead,' replied Dontaus Poorwill grimly.

Belhaine soon retired to his bedroom, declaring himself rather fatigued, leaving Harry and Hermione with Donatus Poorwill. They spoke of the Scriptorium, and of Caleb Priestley, but Hermione decided not to talk about the original purpose of the Circle, nor the task she had been entrusted with. She was not sure how much he knew of it, but she saw his discomfort grow at any allusion to the dead. He also assiduously avoided any physical contact with either her or Harry. She suspected that he would have no stomach for what she had to do. Of more interest to her was how she and Harry were going to leave that place and return to the waking world. She didn't doubt that he had the power to enter her mind in an instant, were she to allow it. Harry questioned him about Armin and the bookshop. Poorwill assured them that Armin was safe, having left the country, and that his collection was hidden where witch-hunters would never find it. Talk of Armin's shop prompted Poorwill to confess that he had been the one to send the cursed package addressed in Harry's name.

'It makes sense that you would have sent it,' Hermione had remarked, 'since you're one of the very few people to practise both innate magic and the Circle. But why?'

'To set you on the path to the Circle, of course,' he had replied. 'I believe I did right.'

Harry's condition particularly interested him, to the extent that he seemed able to put aside his fear of death to question him on it.

'I see your longing for death has lifted,' said Poorwill. 'That is what has prevented you from waking for such a long time. But the effects of such a long embrace will take a while to disappear. You have lain deep indeed, and went willingly to the threshold.'

'I did,' Harry replied, looking at Hermione. 'But now all I want to do is wake up. As long as Hermione wakes with me.'

'She can leave straight away, indeed she must wake soon,' said Poorwill, turning to Hermione. 'You have stayed down here too long. Your body is weakening. Your heart beats slowly. If you stay much longer it will stop beating altogether.'

'I understand,' said Hermione. She felt the truth of his words: even she felt her grip on the waking world was starting to fade. 'I suppose it's possible to leave through your house?'

'Of course,' replied Poorwill.

'And I suppose I would return to the place I left.'

'Undoubtedly,' came the reply.

'Then I'll have to leave here very soon, even if it means leaving Harry.' She looked at Harry and squeezed his hand.

'In the meantime my house is the safest place for him.'

'So Harry can stay here?' said Hermione.

'I recommend it,' said Poorwill. 'My hospitality extends as far as my imagination allows it.'

'I think I'd better take up your offer then,' Harry replied. 'Though I never imagined I'd end up sharing a house with Gondulph Belahine. My reputation at the Ministry will be in tatters if anyone finds out.'

'I think you'll find him interesting company. I'm not sure there is so much that separates you now.'

'We'll see,' Harry replied.

Noting the looks passing between Harry and Hermione, Donatus Poorwill suddenly rose to his feet.

'I will leave you now, if you wish.'

'Thank you,' said Hermione, understanding his meaning. He bowed slightly and crossed the room. Just before the door he stopped and turned.

'Good luck, Miss Granger,' he said gently. 'I look forward to seeing you again soon.' Then he opened the door and disappeared.

Hermione and Harry looked at each other in silence.

'I thought we weren't supposed to be separated,' she said at last.

'I'm coming after you as soon as I can,' he replied, taking hold of her arm and looking into her face with a keen, clear gaze.

'What if I fail?'

'You won't, Hermione. Trust me, after all these years, if there's one person I have total faith in, it's you.'

'But still,' she insisted.

His face darkened.

'In that case I'll be waiting for you under the dark archway.'

She nodded. He took her hand in his fist, kissed it, then kissed her on the cheek.

'I keep thinking of the night you went alone into the forest,' she said.

'I couldn't have let you come.'

'And I can't let you come with me this time. But at least I'll have this.' She pointed to the bracelet on her wrist, visible there to both of them.

* * *

The walls of Donatus Poorwill's house faded and blackness submerged her once again. She waited patiently in the dark until a circle of light illuminated itself in the far distance, seemingly as far off as a star in the night sky. The distance seemed to grow brighter and draw closer until all she had to do was reach out and crawl through it.

When the darkness faded and her eyes could focus again, she was in a place she had never seen before. Even so the sense of disorientation was minimal. A lonely expanse of road stretched out in both directions in mounting dusk, the last buildings of a trading estate on one side, straggly undergrowth giving way to scrubland on the other. No cars were passing on the road. In fact there was no sound at all.

Someone was standing next to her. She turned and saw a girl in her teens. She had dirty blonde hair and was wearing a tracksuit and dark anorak. She took a drag from a cigarette and looked at Hermione with sad, distant eyes. _The eyes of the dead_.

'This is where it happened,' said the girl peremptorily in an Estuary English accent, exhaling smoke as she spoke. 'Now summon her.' There was a terrible authority in the command. Hermione closed her eyes and spoke the incantations. Out of the darkness those same old words emerged: _Helpless before the pain of another_. And when she opened her eyes, Lillian Herrick was standing before them on the road, her eyes wide with terror.

'Here she is,' said Hermione. She no longer knew whether it was her or the dead girl who was speaking.

'I see you,' Lillian replied, her voice a shallow, desiccated whisper.

'Now he's coming near,' Hermione continued. The words came from her lips, but she wasn't controlling them. The voice was that of the dead girl. And she knew that that was whom Lillian was seeing too.

Soft footsteps could be heard on the pavement behind her, soft footsteps approaching quickly. She started to walk forward, her footsteps quickening all the time as she sensed her pursuer and his intent. Then rough hands were around her, covering her mouth, choking her, dragging her off the road into the bushes. She was thrown to the ground hard, knocking the wind out of her. She looked up for a moment at the darkening sky above, then all she saw was a pair of cold, staring eyes and a knife glinting off a streetlight. The knife plunged into her chest. The blood had only just begun to gush from the hole it had made, when he brought it down again, this time into her stomach, then again, and again, bringing searing pain again and again until there was only darkness, rent by a terrible scream, not from her, but from Lillian.

* * *

When Hermione opened her eyes she was lying on her side. Around her she could make out the dank stone walls of the cellar under Pendle House. Evidently she was lying on the table around which the Seven usually sat. Every seat was empty apart from Lillian's. She was at her seat, but bent over the table, her hands sprawled out uselessly before her, her head going up and down in tiny ragged movements.

'Lillian,' she said, hearing her own voice this time. Lillian looked up. Her face was white and her eyes were strewn with tears. Her gaze seemed to be focused on something far distant from Hermione, far beyond the walls of the cellar.

'Lillian,' said Hermione again. Now she seemed to see her. She managed the faintest of smiles, her lower lip trembling as she began to speak.

'I've been waiting for this for so long.'

She reached out and touched Hermione on the cheek.

'Can you help me off here?' said Hermione. She tried to lift herself, but slipped back onto the table, suddenly light-headed. _Only to be expected I suppose_.

Lillian nodded, her eyes still wide with a combination of terror and wonder. Then she reached out her arms and helped Hermione down off the table and onto the chair next to her.

'Your pulse was very slow,' she said. 'Your heart even stopped at one point. All that blood I took from you came in useful after all: it's back inside you now.'

'Really?' said Hermione. _My heart stopped_. _When? At the archway?_

'I couldn't let you die,' said Lillian weakly. 'But I couldn't see you anymore. You wandered far from where I sent you.'

'I did,' said Hermione.

'And you went to places I would have been afraid to go to.'

In a moment Hermione saw it all flash by again.

'She died because of you, the girl,' she said. There was no accusation now.

Lillian shivered.

'That's right.'

'The killer was your boyfriend.'

Lillian shook her head slightly.

'I'm not sure that's the word I would use.'

'He was going to help you purify yourself by doing bad.'

'That's what we were doing. That's how we started it.'

'Who was he?'

'Didn't you recognise him? I suppose you didn't. You only saw him through her eyes.'

Hermione thought for a moment.

'Karl?' she said as a half-guess.

'He was the first. We entered the Circle together.'

'And he left those scars on you.'

'I told myself it was good for me. But it was never enough to make amends.'

As Hermione stared at her she wondered whether the dead girl was still looking through her eyes.

'By her death you sealed the gifts of the Circle,' she said coolly.

'Yes. I walled myself up with my festering conscience.'

'And how do you feel now?' said Hermione. 'Liberated?'

'No,' said Lillian. 'Ready to die. Really ready to die. Thank you Hermione.'

She seemed serious.

'It would seem strange to say you're welcome,' replied Hermione.

Lillian smiled, but it was a smile that offered no comfort.

'Did you know the original purpose of the Circle?' Hermione asked.

'Not for certain. Since I was so weak myself, I could only speculate.'

'I read the original testament,' said Hermione. 'I saw it carved into the rock of the cave. Caleb showed it to me.'

'That's another one I have on my conscience,' said Lillian.

'Was it all worth it?' Hermione asked. 'So much misery and cruelty, for what?'

Lillian wiped a tear from her cheek.

'I only ever wanted to feel sorry. Do you know how difficult that is? My only comfort is that there's only one road for all of us. I can let him come now.'

Hermione suddenly felt her heart beat faster.

'Who do you mean?'

'He's coming with the Witchfinder.'

'The Witchfinder?' said Hermione. 'Mr Morley? Who's going to bring him here?'

Lillian reached out a pale hand and took hold of Hermione's. The hand was cold and dry.

'The one who has wanted to betray me for so long,' she said.

'Who?!' said Hermione, as if the person was going to arrive before Lillian told her who it was.

Lillian smiled again, even more grimly than before.

'Hermione, you know who. In my insanity I had thought you might kill him to keep him from taking over from me.'

_Karl, that's who she means_.

'He'd kill you?' said Hermione. She was almost disgusted at the idea.

'Of course,' replied Lillian, as brightly as she could manage. 'At the very least so that he can rise in the estimation of his master.'

'Mr Morley?' asked Hermione.

'He works for Mr Morley, certainly, and spies for him. But the Witchfinder isn't his master. Who is terrible enough for Karl to actually look up to?' said Lillian.

Suddenly Hermione understood why the voice behind the wolf mask had struck her as familiar.

'The Grey Man,' she replied.

'He needs to prove himself,' Lillian remarked.

'I won't let him,' said Hermione coolly.

Lillian smiled.

'Thanks for the offer, but I can't be saved.' She paused for a moment and the smile faded from her face. Then she went on. 'They're not going to be very pleased when they find that you're not here.'

'What do you mean?' said Hermione. 'I don't plan on going anywhere.'

'You don't have a choice, Hermione,' said Lillian, suddenly deadly serious. 'You're just the bait. Karl and the Witchfinder both want to get their hands on you, but they're going to be terribly disappointed when they only find me. It's going to get very messy I fear.'

'Don't do it,' said Hermione, this time reaching out and grasping Lillian's hand. 'This sacrifice is senseless.'

'It's not at all senseless,' replied Lillian. 'There will be a witness.'

Hermione let go of her hand and stared at her in horror.

'I'm not going to be some passive witness for you. And even if I were, no one would believe the word of a witch.'

'It won't be you,' said Lillian softly.

'Then who?' exclaimed Hermione.

'I've arranged it,' she replied. 'You have to admit I'm rather good at arranging things. You won't have to worry about Mr Morley anymore after tonight. But I leave Karl up to you. He won't allow himself to go down with the Witchfinder. It's much too easy for him to escape. You understand me, don't you?'

Hermione nodded. Lillian took hold of her hand again.

'You don't mind me touching you, one last time?' she said. 'Before I send you away?'

'I won't go willingly,' Hermione replied.

'They're nearly here,' said Lillian, her eyes glinting. 'Don't worry. Once I'm dead you'll be free to come back.'

Suddenly Lillian seemed to fade from where she was sitting. Hermione couldn't quite understand what was happening.

'See you again soon, Hermione,' she said. 'And thank you. I wish we really could have been friends. But who'd be friends with a psycho like me?'

Before Hermione could reply the ground seemed to fall out from beneath her.


	75. The penitence of Lillian Herrick - Ch 28

28\. The deliverance of Lillian Herrick

After little more than a moment of darkness, the cellar at Pendle House came back into view, only now it was tilted at a 90-degree angle. Moving her head slightly, Hermione realised that she was once again lying on the table. She looked across at Lillian's seat, but it was empty. She jumped down off the table and looked around the cellar. Everything was the same: the dank walls, the empty seats around the table; only everything was enveloped in all-encompassing silence. She crossed the stone floor and began to go up the stairs, moving as quickly but as silently as possible.

Nothingness greeted her at the top of the stairs. The ground floor of the house was gone, replaced by endless dark. She tried to step out into it but found it impossible to tell if she was moving in any direction. So she stood on the top step, looking around her. _What has she done? Where has she sent me? Why was I lying on the table again?_ Then she understood. She was imprisoned in that place, or rather in that moment, until Lillian no longer had the strength, or the life, to keep her there. She went back down into the basement and began to pace up and down, not knowing what else to do.

* * *

The shabby, peeling facade looked just as it had done in Imogen's dream. The resemblance produced an odd sensation in her stomach - that and the fact that the journey to the Highlands had taken no more than the time it took to walk through the front door of her flat. But instead of stepping out into the hallway of her building, they had stepped onto a kind of muddy driveway that stood before an ancient and dilapidated farmhouse, hemmed in by fir trees.

'Look familiar?' asked Rachel. The question was a rhetorical one, of course.

'Yes … This is the place,' Imogen replied in a low, hushed voice. The only difference was that instead of it being dark, the last light of the day lingered palely overhead.

'No sign of any cars for the time being,' muttered Isaac Edwards.

'In the dream they arrive after it gets dark,' said Imogen.

'That's why I brought us here a little bit earlier,' added Rachel.

'Didn't you say that a light was on in a window round the back?' said Isaac.

'Yes, that's right,' said Imogen.

'Shall we see if it's on?'

'Ok.'

Imogen glanced up again at the darkened windows, then at the gap between the house and the undergrowth that crowded about its walls.

'It's that way, I think,' she said, pointing to the gap.

They made their way round to the back in single file. For a moment Imogen's sleeve snagged on a thin, protruding branch, dragging her back. She untangled herself and pushed on.

'That's odd,' she said as she looked up at the back of the house. 'The light isn't on.'

The upstairs window where she had expected to see a light was as dark and inscrutable as the others.

'Maybe it just confirms that we're early,' said Isaac. The light was now fading fast. He turned to Rachel.

'Do you think we should try to go in now anyway?'

Rachel's face was as impenetrable as the windows.

'I wonder if we'll be allowed in,' she muttered, as if to herself. 'Although having said that, nothing prevented me from bringing us here. Perhaps we should try the front door.'

'Wait,' Imogen murmured, reaching out and touching Rachel's arm. Her eyes were still fixed on the upstairs window. Now, in the mounting darkness, the light had gone on. 'They'll be here soon.'

'Well, now we come to it,' said Isaac. 'The question is, should we be inside before them or wait for them out here?'

'That's just it,' said Imogen. 'I don't know. The dream never told me.'

'But we're assuming that Mr Morley will be one of these men, aren't we?' said Isaac.

'I think he must be,' replied Imogen.

'Then I think we have to go inside. Otherwise how can we know what's supposed to happen in there?'

'You're right,' said Imogen. She looked at Rachel. 'Let's try and go inside.'

Rachel nodded and they made their way back through the undergrowth to the front of the house.

'Who's going to open the door?' said Isaac, as the three of them stood before it.

'You should try,' said Rachel to Imogen.

'Ok,' said Imogen. She put her hand on the door handle and pushed down on it. The door swung slowly open. Inside the hallway was dark. Imogen peered inside.

'Shall I go in?' she said.

'We're right behind you,' replied Isaac, pulling out a pocket torch and switching it on.

'Which way should we go?' said Imogen, as she edged into the hallway, her eyes following the beam of light cast by Isaac's torch.

'The light we saw was on in Lillian's study,' said Rachel, who was standing next to Imogen, looking dispassionately around her. 'But the Seven meet in the basement.'

Imogen stopped and tried to listen for any kind of sound. But only silence emanated from the darkness.

'No one's coming to meet us,' she murmured.

Suddenly another, stronger light shone on them from behind, accompanied by the sound of an engine outside.

'They're here,' said Imogen, almost to herself. 'We should hide.'

'This way,' said Rachel, opening the living room door and disappearing inside. Isaac followed her quickly, casting his torch about inside the room, looking for the light switch. Imogen went to follow but the door slammed shut, leaving her trapped in the hallway. At the same time, the front door closed of its own accord, breaking off the light that came from outside. She frantically shot out her hand and tried the door handle, then banged on the door to try and force it open, but it wouldn't move. She called out as loudly as she dared through the door but no reply came, nor any other noise.

Then out of the corner of her eye she caught sight of a small moving light. She turned slowly and looked down the corridor. The light came from a candle in the hand of a dark-haired woman walking slowly and noiselessly down the stairs. As she came down the last flight of stairs she looked sadly but purposefully at Imogen. She said nothing but continued past the end of the hallway, disappearing from sight. Imogen looked again at the door she had tried to open. _There's no way of opening it. And it's shut for a reason._ She had no doubt that the woman on the stairs was Lillian Herrick and that her part in whatever was going on was to follow her.

A car door slammed outside and muffled male voices started up on the other side of the front door. So she quickly made her way down the hallway.

The kitchen door was open. _That's where I'm supposed to go._ At the other end of the kitchen was an entrance to the basement of the house. _The Seven meet in the basement_. That was what Rachel had said. She crossed the kitchen quickly and started down the dark steps. She was surprised how little fear she felt. As if someone was protecting her.

Lillian Herrick was alone in the dimly lit basement, standing with her back to a large wooden table with high-backed chairs. For a moment she seemed to return Imogen's gaze, then the next moment she seemed to look beyond her, as if she wasn't even there.

'Hello,' said Imogen hesitantly, but Lillian made no reply. She just looked bleakly past her, her eyes trained on the stairs. Imogen stood still, looking at Lillian, not sure what to do, but feeling that there was no point in trying to attract her attention. _It's like we're in two different places._ Heavy footsteps started down the basement steps. Lillian looked up the stairs. Imogen turned and looked too. The first figure to appear was that of a tall, handsome blonde-haired man with glasses, followed by Mr Morley himself.

The two men walked past Imogen, not even acknowledging her presence. She started to say something, but stopped when she realised that they really hadn't seen her. She looked again at Lillian. Her eyes were fixed on the men now standing in front of her.

'So where's Hermione Granger?' said Mr Morley, his question half directed at Lillian, half at his companion.

Lillian seemed to smile at this question.

'Did you really think you'd find her here, Karl?' she said, addressing the tall, blonde man. 'Did you really think you'd broken through my protection?'

The man named Karl said nothing in reply, but seemed to screw up his face in disgust.

'It's a trick,' he said curtly to Mr Morley. 'Hermione Granger isn't here.'

'You mean _she_ tricked _you_,' said Mr Morley coolly, gesturing at Lillian.

'Hermione Granger has been back here, I'm sure of it,' said Karl. 'Only she's being kept hidden from us. And there's only one way to make Lillian give her up.'

'That's right, Karl,' said Lillian softly. Then Imogen heard her voice right inside her head.

_Call the police now_, she said. _Tell them a murder's taking place_. Imogen hesitated for a moment, staring at Lillian, who made no attempt to look at her. Then Karl took out a long knife and began to walk towards Lillian. Imogen wrenched her phone out of her pocket and dialled.

'Aren't you even going to try and take it out of my hand? Make me use it on myself?' he asked mockingly.

'I could of course,' Lillian replied. 'But I don't want to.'

'Your loss,' Karl replied. He was standing right in front of her, the knife angled upwards at her chest. 'You've become just as weak as your friend Hermione.'

'Thanks to her I've seen the light,' Lillian replied calmly.

'Seen the light?' said Karl, the scorn in his voice palpable. 'I'm genuinely sorry to see you like this. You've become pathetic. The old you would never have let this happen.'

'But I always knew it would,' said Lillian, looking straight into his eyes. 'And I always knew you would do it.'

_The phone started to ring at the other end of the line. Imogen put her phone to her ear, not taking her eyes off the scene in front of her._

Karl smiled.

'You should have got rid of me then. Tell me, what's the point of letting all your hard work go to waste?'

'My hard work?' said Lillian. 'Remind me, what is it that I've actually achieved?'

'What, you exposed the entire wizarding world and you think you haven't achieved anything?' Karl asked, slightly incredulous.

'Oh that's right,' said Lillian, with a derisive snigger. 'That should count for something with Mr Morley at least.' She looked over at him as he followed the proceedings in silence. 'Perhaps as I helped you to throw back the curtain on wizarding society, you might consider going easy on me?'

'I don't know what you're talking about,' said Mr Morley curtly. 'All I know is that you snatched Hermione Granger out from in front of me and that even now you persist in withholding her. I would have you arrested, but no one's ever heard of you or of the kind of magic you practise.'

'You know all about my kind of magic, of course,' said Lillian. 'He's explained it all to you.'

'I know all I need to know about it. But so far it's undetectable to our devices. You're of no use to me. You're merely an annoyance.'

Karl smiled at her.

'Hear that? All your hard work and you're nothing but an annoyance. Completely expendable. You might as well not have bothered after all.'

_Finally someone's picking up. 'Hello?' Err … I'd like to report a serious incident. I think a murder is taking place … What do I mean? I can see a man holding a knife to a woman's chest. He's threatening her_.'

Lillian ignored Karl and addressed Mr Morley again.

'What if I give myself up? If you torture me enough I might tell you where Hermione is.'

'You deserve it, there's no question about that,' replied Mr Morley, a glimmer of a smile on his lips. 'Although I suspect that with such an unrepentant witch as you, it would take an annoyingly long time to get you to talk. But I have every faith that Karl here can locate Hermione Granger, especially once you're out of the way. And as I mentioned, you're a non-entity. I can find no record of you even existing any more, let alone that you have any connection to mainstream wizardry. Lillian Herrick, whoever she is or was, seems to have disappeared years ago. So it's no skin off my nose if you are simply erased.'

'_And there's another man watching them, encouraging the man with the knife.' For a moment Imogen wanted to shout at the operator that Stephen Morley, the Witchfinder himself, was the other man, but she felt certain that if she did, she would be dismissed as a hoax caller._

Lillian continued to look at Mr Morley, a strange look glinting in her eyes. The smile on his lips disappeared and was replaced with a bitter scowl.

'Even now you mock the memory of my sister!'

'Not at all,' said Lillian. 'I'm looking forward to meeting her.'

'Enough! Get it over with!' he shouted at Karl. Karl turned and looked again at Lillian. The hand in which he held the knife was deadly still.

'Always the servant,' she said to him in a low voice. 'That must really hurt.'

'I won't always be the servant,' he replied through gritted teeth.

'I wonder if the Grey Man's listening,' said Lillian.

'I doubt you're of any interest to him either,' replied Karl.

'Let me give you one last piece of advice,' said Lillian. 'You can't beat him. You'll just end up getting yourself devoured.'

'_Where am I? I'm hidden, but I can seem very clearly … No I can't do anything to stop them … Just send the police now … You might be able to stop them … Ok, thank you! Here's the address …_

'What do you know about it?'

'You're too much like him. To beat him you need a conscience.'

'A conscience?' Karl repeated with disgust.

'And you know what's really funny, Karl? The only person who can help you now is Hermione. I'd bear that in mind if I were you.'

Karl scowled at her.

'I don't think I'll bother, actually,' he said. Then he plunged the knife into Lillian's chest.

Imogen _tried to run forward, but an invisible barrier prevented her from getting anywhere near them._

Lillian staggered forward for an instant, blood spreading around the wound in her chest. Karl still stood just in front of her, the knife raised, ready to stab again. She seemed to look beyond him, and beyond Mr Morley too, who was still watching the scene impassively.

'From sin to sin we are born at night,' she whispered, as if speaking some incantation. 'Knives dear knives, leave only light.'

Then the roof of the cellar seemed to disappear, and with it the house that lay above it. Above them the night sky arched above them, scattered with stars. Lillian looked up at the star-filled sky that she had conjured and smiled. Then her eyes were closed to it.

_Imogen's legs felt weak and she felt them give way under her. She dropped to her knees, just as Lillian Herrick fell to hers. Then everything went dark._

* * *

The light returned and Imogen swayed to her feet, steadying herself by leaning against the back wall of the basement. Mr Morley and the man named Karl, the murderer, were gone. Instead a girl was crouching over Lillian Herrick's body, looking down into the pool of blood trickling over the stone floor. The girl's hair hung low as she bent her head, obscuring her face.

'I saw what happened,' Imogen said suddenly in the silence.

The girl looked up. Imogen's first thought was relief at the fact that she could be heard, but the thought was cut short as she caught sight of the girl's face.

There was nothing unusual about it, but there was something in her expression, in her eyes, that went beyond grief or shock or any sort of normal emotion you might feel in such a situation. Her face was normal: pretty even, although pale, thin and tired, with bright dark eyes and long brown hair hanging down in waves onto her chest. She was dressed normally too, in a grey sweater and jeans. But something about her unnerved Imogen.

'She said there would be a witness,' said the girl. Her voice was sad but clear, ringing out around the dank stone basement. 'She didn't let me see.'

Imogen didn't understand. Then a thought occurred to her.

'Are you Hermione Granger by any chance?'

The girl nodded soberly.

'I'm sorry I don't know who you are,' Hermione replied. 'But Lillian obviously brought you here.'

'I'm Imogen,' said Imogen. 'Imogen Sontley. I work for the Agency for Magical Affairs.'

Hermione almost smiled.

'I'm sure she chose you well,' she said. 'Pleased to meet you.'

Imogen shivered as she recalled the details of what she had just witnessed.

'They came here for you,' she said.

'I know,' said Hermione. 'She said they would.'

'I was stuck here in this room, as if I was invisible,' said Imogen, the shock starting to swell up in her. 'I couldn't do anything to stop them.'

'Don't worry,' said Hermione. 'It's how she intended it.'

She turned and looked again at Lillian Herrick's body.

'I don't want to leave her like this,' said Hermione. 'I want to tidy her up, so to speak. But we have to leave things just as they are, for the police.'

'The police!' Imogen exclaimed, a sob mingling with the words as they came out. 'I called the police. She told me to. It was the one called Karl who stabbed her,' she added. 'And Mr Morley stood calmly by, watching, saying how Lillian was an irrelevance and that Karl could do what he liked.'

Just then there were footsteps on the stairs. Imogen felt her body go taut, readying herself to face the police and the questions that would follow. But instead Rachel Thirlwell came carefully down the steps and into view, followed by Isaac Edwards.

'Hermione!' they both exclaimed as they saw her. Then their expressions darkened as they saw the body on the floor.

'What happened to you?' said Imogen when she saw them.

'Lillian trapped us in the living room,' said Rachel. 'Or more precisely in a moment in time. When I opened the door, instead of the hall there was just a kind of nothingness. I tried to break free, but there was a kind of desperate force restraining me. Now I understand why we were able to get out in the end.'

She looked quizzically at Hermione.

'You didn't … surely?'

'No!' said Hermione. 'It was Karl, apparently with Mr Morley's blessing. She brought Imogen here to witness it.'

'So that's what 'the Witchfinder's downfall' was,' said Isaac. 'She arranged everything perfectly.'

Hermione looked thoughtful. She turned to Rachel and Isaac.

'Did you hear or see them?'

'We heard their voices in the hall, then we heard the car drive away,' said Isaac. 'I don't think they can have got far, unless they decide to travel magically.'

'The police will be here soon,' said Hermione. 'And they'll have three witnesses ready to testify that Stephen Morley is an accessory to murder. It doesn't matter where he goes. The problem is Karl. It's much easier for him to disappear.'

'You know where he will go,' said Rachel.

'Yes, I know,' said Hermione coolly. 'Lillian entrusted me with the task of finding him.'

'How come they came by car anyway?' said Imogen. 'I thought you all just … what do you call it? Disapparate.'

'I've been thinking about that,' said Isaac. 'They came by car because they were already nearby.'

Hermione's eyes flashed.

'Hogwarts,' she said. Isaac nodded.

Something seemed to flicker behind Hermione's eyes. Whatever it was made Imogen avert her gaze for a moment. In the distance she thought she could hear something like a police siren.

'Time for me to go back to school,' said Hermione, before adding, 'I'll be in touch.' The next moment she was gone from the basement.


	76. The penitence of Lillian Herrick - Ch 29

29\. Hands

The corridors of Hogwarts had never seemed so quiet, so empty of pupils. Ron's gaze kept drifting from the back of Professor McGonagall's peaked hat to the ancient stone walls that he had walked along so many times. They barely passed a soul as they made their way through the school, following the footsteps strangely gleaming from the stone floor. A skeleton staff of guards guarded the school, Professor McGonagall had informed them, confirming what Neville had said and what Tobias had been maintaining all along.

At last they stopped before a low door, which lay half-concealed beneath an alcove. The glowing footprints led right up to it and seemingly under it. Professor McGonagall muttered an incantation and the door swung silently open. Once inside, they followed a dark, cramped winding staircase up at least one floor. Ron had no idea where they were. Then the stairs gave way to a grand open space, one that he had been in before, albeit only on rare occasions: the Headmistress's study.

Professor McGonagall turned and faced the little group of wizards.

'Welcome to Hogwarts, everyone,' she said, as wide a smile on her lips as Ron had ever seen.

'That wasn't the normal way in, I bet,' Ron muttered. Here on school grounds and in the presence of Professor McGonagall, he found himself slipping back into the role of a recalcitrant sixth former.

'That was the back way in,' Professor McGonagall retorted.

'Did Professor Dumbledore ever use those stairs?' Ron remarked drily.

'On more than one occasion,' came a gentle, amused voice from somewhere above them. Ron glanced up quickly. The voice came from Professor Dumbledore's portrait up on the wall of the office.

'I was quite nimble in former years, Mr Weasley,' continued Professor Dumbledore in the same tone, winking serenely at the gathered company. Not sure what to do, Ron gave him a brief, slightly sheepish little wave.

'I have prepared the announcement for the muggle press, should our mission be successful' said Professor McGonagall, gesturing towards a letter on her desk. 'Signed and sealed. Mr Longbottom informs me that the muggles use something called email these days, but I'm afraid I'm not equipped for that here.'

'We'll sort that out later,' Tobias replied.

'Now that we're in, what do we do now?' said Beth.

'Wait for the others, I suppose,' said Ron.

'Is there room in here for everyone?' Tobias remarked.

'Oh, you'd be surprised how far this office extends,' Professor McGonagall replied. 'The first thing we need to do is see what our hosts are up to.' The word 'hosts' was delivered in a withering change of tone. She went briskly over to her desk, picked up a small spherical object that looked like it was made of brass and peered closely at it. The others leaned in towards her instinctively, trying to see what it was that she was looking at, particularly as dim shapes seemed to be moving about on its surface.

'There, have a look for yourselves,' said Professor McGonagall, handing the sphere to Tobias, the person standing nearest to her. He took hold of the sphere and looked closely into it.

'That's interesting,' he said. 'Who is that?' he asked, pointing at the sphere.

'The superintendent of Hogwarts,' replied Professor McGonagall acidly. 'Fancies himself as a witchfinder. Keep an eye on him while I'm gone. I'm going to fetch the next group.'

And with that Professor McGonagall walked swiftly away, disappearing down the back stairs.

Ron looked over Tobias's shoulder into the brass orb. A studious-looking man was sitting blankly at his desk, seemingly doing nothing. Ron glanced up at the portrait of Professor Dumbledore.

'Um, what do you make of this, sir?' he mumbled. It had never been clear to him what the rules were when it came to speaking to pictures.

'Make of what, Mr Weasley?' replied Dumbledore's portrait in the same serene manner.

'This bloke they've put in charge of running Hogwarts.'

'Professor McGonagall is in charge of running Hogwarts.'

'Yes, but officially speaking, this guy we're supposed to keep an eye on is in charge.'

'Then you'd better keep an eye on him. But as far as I can see (and I can't see far), he's just an underling. He's used to things being very quiet here. He's not used to anything like unrest.'

Ron nodded and looked back into the orb. The superintendent of Hogwarts was on the telephone. '_When will you be arriving_?' he was saying to the person at the other end of the line. '_I need to know when to open the gates_.' The superintendent hung up the telephone and got up from behind his desk. The orb followed him as he stepped away from the desk and began to pace up and down his office, which Ron now recognised as the transfiguration classroom. _That must particularly annoy McGonagall._ Then the superintendent went to the door, opened it and peered out into the corridor. Apparently having seen no one, he closed the door, went quickly back to his desk and sat down. Since for the time being he made no more movements, Ron looked back up at Dumbledore's portrait.

'You know about Hermione and Harry I suppose,' he said.

The expression on Dumbledore's face seemed troubled.

'You've parted ways,' the portrait commented.

'I lost them,' Ron replied.

'I don't know the details,' said the portrait. 'They're enduring a lot of darkness, but I think they'll find a way back to you.'

Ron wondered if the portrait had seen things he hadn't.

'Once I saw you coming close too,' the picture added mysteriously. Ron caught Dumbledore's meaning, but preferred not to question him any further. Dumbledore seemed to have resumed his normal portrait pose, so Ron dropped his gaze to the orb. A wizard he vaguely recognised from Hogwarts but couldn't place was reporting something to the superintendent, something about someone having glimpsed the room of requirement. Ron followed the superintendent's comings and goings for a few minutes, until Beth caught his arm.

'Ron, look,' she said.

Ron turned away from the orb. Professor McGonagall had returned. Emerging out from the entrance to the back stairs came Ginny, Draco Malfoy, Caius Hanmer and Hinks.

'Well, that was close!' Professor McGonagall exclaimed, somewhat out of breath. 'We nearly ran into that ghastly Mr Morley again.'

'In fact, he nearly ran us down with his car,' added Caius.

'Did he see you?' said Tobias.

'No chance,' said Malfoy triumphantly.

'To be honest, he seemed to be in too much a hurry,' Ginny explained. 'The car pulled up at the front door and him and this other man got out. They seemed to be arguing. Mr Morley seemed particularly angry. Then the door opened, he went inside and the other man got back in the car.'

'So where's Morley now?' asked Ron.

'There,' muttered Enid Blackledge. Ron looked round at her. She was pointing into the orb. Mr Morley was pacing the room in front of the superintendent of Hogwarts. He did indeed seem to be rather agitated. Then the telephone rang. The superintendent answered it. '_The police_?!' he exclaimed loudly. Mr Morley turned abruptly and stared at the superintendent as he spoke into the telephone receiver. '_Well I suppose you should _…' He stopped speaking as Mr Morley reached across his desk and grabbed the receiver out of his hand. '_Are they here_?!' he shouted down the receiver. '_What do they want_?! … _Did you tell them I was here_?' he continued in the same frenzied tone. '_Good … that's good_.', he added, his composure returning. '_Wait a second. Delay them. We will let them in in good time. Don't tell them anything. Just delay them_.' He put the receiver down gently and looked at the superintendent.

'_The police are here_,' he said in a calm, almost urbane tone.

'_Why are they here?_'

'_They want to speak to me_.'

'_What about_?'

'_I'm not sure. I find it rather strange that they should think I'm here. They didn't contact you, did they_?'

'_No, not at all. This is the first I've heard of it. We weren't announced of anything in advance_.'

'_Perhaps I'm needed in London. There may be some sort of emergency_.'

'_Shall I let them in then_?'

Mr Morley pursed his lips.

'_I suppose we'd better_.'

* * *

A black car sped back through the grounds of Hogwarts. Its headlights were switched off, making it barely visible against the darkened trees and lawns. As it approached the outer gate that marked the edge of the school grounds, it slowed — the gate was shut. The car stopped about ten metres from the gate and a figure stepped out into the darkness. He stood still, looking up at the closed gate, as if he was waiting for something. But nothing happened: the gate stayed shut. He glanced left and right into the dark undergrowth then back up at the gate. Again, nothing stirred.

Suddenly the gate swung violently open, not outwards, but inwards. For a moment there was no sound but the faint creaking of the gate's hinges. Then Hermione Granger walked through the gates and onto school grounds.

'Have you come to thank me, Hermione?' Karl Flett called out at the approaching figure.

'Thank you for what?' Hermione replied in a cold voice.

'I've taken care of Lillian for you, though you know that of course. You were hiding somewhere about the place just now, I could sense you. Were you afraid to come out and try and save her?'

'She was expecting you. And Stephen Morley,' Hermione replied, now toe-to-toe with Karl. 'As always, Karl, you were just her pawn.'

Karl seemed to snigger at this. His eyes were obscured behind his glasses.

'She hid you away, did she? Protected you?'

'She knew that you and Morley wouldn't be able to resist trying to get your hands on me.'

'That was far-sighted of her, wasn't it? And now she's dead, what exactly is she going to do to stop me getting my hands on you?'

Hermione smiled.

'Do you really think you can?' she said in a low voice.

He returned her smile.

'Oh I get it, you're going to try and kill me at last?'

He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a blood-smeared knife.

'I don't need to tell you what I did with this, especially since you were apparently watching. Now I'm going to stick it in you too.' He put the knife back in his jacket and rubbed his eye nonchalantly. 'What weapon were you planning to use, by the way? You got rid of your wand, didn't you, in some kind of ridiculous dramatic gesture?'

'I don't need a wand to do magic,' Hermione replied.

'Not that magic will help you much. If you were to try and curse me, you'd be detected, and I'd have a load of reinforcements in no time. Although I have to admit that it would take all the fun out of it. On the other hand, since I work for the Safe Magic Campaign, I'm licensed to practise magic.' As he spoke his last words, he reached again inside his jacket, this time taking out a wand.

'You really are multi-talented, Karl,' Hermione remarked. 'You're a safe wizard, one of the Seven of Sie and a minion of the Grey Man. Is there anyone you haven't actually worked for?'

'I work for myself,' Karl replied, raising the wand and pointing it delicately at Hermione's face.

'As it turns out you're a wizard as well as a practitioner of the Circle,' said Hermione, ignoring the wand pointing at her face, 'I suppose you were the Many are Warned, that day in Ladymarsh? That's how come there were traces of magic there.'

'You were always under surveillance, Hermione,' Karl replied.

'And the memory you stole was the memory of Harry giving me the bracelet, which you promptly showed to Ron, is that right?'

'Such a treasured memory, a memory so present in your thoughts, was easy to extract.'

'I'll make you pay for that, Karl.'

He smirked in reply.

'I'm still waiting for you to prove you've got the guts to do something like that.'

'Tell me,' Hermione replied, 'did Lillian send you to Ladymarsh, or were you let off the leash that day?'

'Oh, I know the place well.'

'Was that you who left the Grey Man's calling card at Hegarty's house?'

'He was lucky to escape,' Karl replied.

'Since you never studied at Hogwarts, I suppose you learned with itinerants. Presumably with Hegarty himsel.f'

'Very good.'

'And Hegarty introduced you to the Seven-Pointed Circle.'

'No, he kept it to himself. Lillian introduced me to the Circle.'

'Poor Lillian,' said Hermione. 'If only she were a better judge of character she might still be alive.'

'Her choosing you,' Karl replied, 'was a sign that the rot had set in.'

'Do you know where Hegarty is now?' Hermione asked. 'Just out of curiosity.'

'If I did, he would be dead.'

Hermione smiled.

'You seem terribly offhand when it comes to death.'

Karl pushed the tip of the wand against Hermione's throat. Still she didn't flinch.

'The Grey Man has been alive for a thousand years.'

'Is he giving you tips on how to stay young?'

Karl's eyes narrowed.

'He's not the sort of person you should make fun of. It's only likely to make your death slower and more painful.'

Hermione reached up and gently pushed the wand away from her neck. She could see Karl struggle to keep it in place, but he had no choice but to yield.

'I don't see him here,' Hermione commented, glancing around the night sky above the fir trees and up at the ramparts and turrets of Hogwarts. Karl scowled coldly at her.

'Why don't you come with me and see him?' The next instant they were both inside the Circle. Hermione could still see Hogwarts on the hill in front of her, now conjured beneath the red sky. Karl put his wand away and stood calmly in front of Hermione. He seemed to glance up at the sky himself.

'Shall I count to ten?' he said.

Hermione said nothing. She knew what he was getting at.

'You're not going to put on that ridiculous wolf mask, are you?' she replied.

'It served its purpose,' he remarked. 'I don't need it anymore. But you're still going to be hunted. I just thought I'd give you a chance to try and hide before I track you down.'

'Will it just be you?' asked Hermione.

'Just me,' Karl replied.

Hermione folded her arms.

'I have one last question.'

'Go on.'

'Since guilt drives the Circle, how come you feel no guilt?'

His laughter seemed to reverberate in the night air.

'You're so stupid! All of you! You never got it. All that misery for nothing!'

'What do you mean?' she began to say, all the time an idea starting to form itself. 'Unless …'

'Catching up at last? Of course for people like you, it does work that way. You'd never have had the guts to do it my way.'

'Guilt drives it,' Hermione repeated in a low voice, the idea now fully formed. 'The feeling or the fact.'

Karl smiled.

'The mere fact of _being_ guilty is enough. More than enough. Admit your guilt, of course. No false sense of innocence. No excuses. The lucidity of seeing you're doing wrong, Lillian was right about that. But no one said you have to care about it. That was all her. That was all she ever wanted to get out of it. We started out well enough, with that girl she had me kill.'

The rage beneath her skin surged outwards. It was as if it was beating against the insides of her eyes and her skull. _Not yet_.

'Did you ever feel any remorse?'

'I tried to convince myself that I did. But it wasn't strong enough for me. Not like for Lillian.'

'So you tried torturing Lillian, to see if that would work?'

'It did work to begin with, as I actually thought I was in love with her then. It soon wore off, but I was sealed inside the Circle by then. That's when I started to rethink the texts. It was such a relief when I worked it out. I was the only one. At least the only one of Lillian's pathetic little circle. Even Hraefn, who had some potential, I heard him crying alone in his room. But with Lillian setting the example, I suppose it was inevitable that you'd all follow her like sheep. Not one of you capable of thinking for themselves. Here's the correct interpretation, all you have to do is follow it. You're all a joke. Like some sort of Sunday School Bible study group.'

'And that's how the Grey Man and his followers interpret it too, of course,' Hermione replied calmly. She hoped she was managing to hide her sense of shame at failing to consider this interpretation, although, she reflected, who knows how they felt the first time they committed the terrible act that bound them together.

'Of course. You surely don't think they weep over their prey as they devour them?'

'No, I don't.'

He grinned at her.

'And I won't feel anything when I devour you, Hermione.'

She stood completely still. _We will have justice_, came the voice inside her.

'Ten, did you say?'

He smirked in the darkness.

'I did.'

'Go on then, start counting,' she said. The next moment she was gone.

* * *

Thirty-three wizards watched through the golden orb as the superintendent opened the door to his office and ushered two police officers inside. Stephen Morley strode to meet them, his bravado seemingly still intact. The policemen glanced warily around the room, as if they were fearful of triggering some sort of curse. They looked stony-faced at Mr Morley, telling him that he was to help them with their enquiries.

_What about?_

_The murder of Miss Lillian Herrick. She was found murdered in the basement of her home earlier this evening._

_What's that got to do with me?_

_I have three eyewitnesses who put you and another man at the scene of the crime this evening. One of them says she saw you watch as the other man stabbed Miss Herrick to death. Her words were that you 'gave your blessing' for the murder._

_And is it your intention to arrest me?_

_You are not being charged at the moment, sir, but you will need to come with us._

Mr Morley glanced at the superintendent and shrugged his shoulders, as if this was some minor misunderstanding that could be cleared up in an instant.

_I suppose I'd better._

_One other thing, sir. Are you acquainted with a Mr Karl Flett?_

_I am._

_Is he on the premises here?_

_No._

_Do you know where we might find him?_

_No, I'm afraid not._

_But you were in his company earlier this evening?_

_Yes, but that was some time ago._

_I see. Are you ready to leave, sir?_

_I am._

They watched as Stephen Morley left the room, flanked by the two policemen, leaving the superintendent to 'carry on as usual'.

'What do we do now?' said Neville to Ron.

Ron glanced at the superintendent, who was standing in the middle of his office looking rather lost. Ron smiled nervously. Then he turned to Professor McGonagall.

'How many of them are there in the building do you reckon?'

She pursed her lips.

'Fewer than we are. And less than half are wizards.'

Ron nodded then turned to Neville.

'In that case, we'd better get moving'.

* * *

Hermione's hand was already on the great door to the Scriptorium. She pushed hard and it swung open, the silent shelves looming above her once again. She turned for a moment, seeing no one, and pulled the door shut behind her. Then she walked quickly down the aisle in front of her. Now she would really be able to test whether Karl suffered from the same dread of that place, which seemed to have afflicted Lillian.

She was halfway down the aisle when she heard the great door opening behind her. She stopped for a moment to listen, her heart starting to beat quicker. Then she pressed on towards the centre, doubling her pace. Steady footsteps echoed behind her in the aisle.

'Did you think that this place would protect you, Hermione?' came Karl's voice down the aisle. 'Do you know what would happen if I took down one of the books on the shelves? The pages would be blank, because I have no conscience. The dead have no hold over me. Not like Lillian.'

Hermione came out into the vast open space beneath the great dome. She looked at the central pillar. Should she try and go down to the archway? Was Caleb Priestley still wandering there? It didn't matter. She turned around. Karl was still coming towards her down the aisle. Grinning, he took out his knife and stepped out beneath the great dome.

'Is this where you want to die, Hermione?' he said. 'Don't you have a better plan than this?'

_It's time I had one_. She turned over her hand and opened her empty palm. _Can I kill him_? _If I have to_. As she looked at her outstretched hand, a wand slowly formed itself there, seemingly out of nothingness. The wand wasn't hers, but seemed like a rather good imitation. _I hope it works_.

'I can parry any spell you send my way,' said Karl as he approached. 'Try anything you like. Even a killing curse, if you dare.'

She was so sick of him pre-empting her every move. Hastily she raised the wand and pointed it at him. The incantation scarcely formulated, three bolts of fire shot from the end of the wand and swarmed towards him. He swatted the first two aside with his knife, but the third followed a twisted, incoherent trajectory and came at him at an angle he didn't quite expect, forcing him to readjust and paw the fireball away at the last moment. But still he came nearer. _You won't get away with taking me down from a distance_, he said, speaking into her mind. _You'll have to bloody your hands_. _Here, have a knife_. Suddenly a long, jagged knife appeared in her free hand. He swayed closer, raising his knife, still stained with Lillian's blood, in preparation to slash at her. Then suddenly he lowered the knife, holding it wide. _I'll even let you have the first go_. _Do you know what it feels like to stick a knife into someone's flesh? To rupture their internal organs, to watch the blood pour out? Don't you want to find out? Don't you want to test how much of a conscience you still have? There may be less than you think._

Then the image was in her head of her ramming the knife into his abdomen, the grin on his face contorting in pain as he fell to his knees, the blood gushing out and splashing onto her. _Don't make it quick, Hermione. Make sure I suffer_. She raised the knife, directing it towards him. He grinned in reply. Then the knife vanished from her hand. He scowled. _Stupid girl_. He sprang at her, his knife flashing.

She stepped aside, leaving him lunging with the knife into mid-air. This time, instead of a spell, she wanted to use the Circle on him. But since he lacked a conscience, what could possibly hurt him? Then a voice spoke in her head. _Bring him to me_, it seemed to say. The voice was faint, as if it came from a great distance, and somehow disembodied. _Let me see him_, said the strange disembodied voice again. Suddenly Karl flinched, lowering his knife for a moment. He looked up at Hermione, a look of fear and rage mingling in his eyes. _Has he heard the voice too?_ He leapt at her again, swinging his knife so that little droplets of blood flew off it and sprayed across her.

She cast another spell, again without thinking, and a circle of flames shot up around her. _Fire, fire, it's all I can think of_. The curtain of fire seemed to parry the knife blade. For an instant she could see nothing but the flames that she had conjured around her. The next the flames were gone, and Karl was standing in front of her. She lashed out. A flaming rope shot from her hand and coiled itself around his throat. He howled with pain, his hands pawing at his neck. The smell of scorched flesh filled the air. But the next moment the rope was gone, leaving a collar of raw flesh around his neck. He was laughing, his eyes swimming with pain.

'Well done!' he yelled. 'That's more like it!'

She stared at him. _Hate. Hunt_.

'You know you're beautiful with that look of hatred in your eyes,' he added. 'I'm getting all hard now. Just thinking about what you and I might do together once I make you submit.'

'That's quite possibly the world's worst chat-up line,' she replied.

He laughed.

'You know what? It probably is.'

She stuck out her wand to curse him, but he shot out his free hand quicker and grabbed her by the wrist of her wand hand. His grasp was tight and burned cold on the skin around her wrist. She tried to break free but his grip was too tight, and dimly she realised that the grasp was locked around her brain too. He smiled, and she heard his voice inside her head. _I promise, once you're dead, the first thing I do will be to switch him off_. _It's just a shame you won't be there to see it_. He raised his knife. Then from behind him, out of the shadow, an arm shot around his neck. The knife dropped from his hand and fell to the floor. He let go of Hermione's wrist as he was dragged back, the force causing him to stumble to his knees. As he fell, Hermione saw the face of his assailant. _Harry_. His eyes gleamed, but the rest of him was still girded in shadow, if not more so than the last time she had seen him.

'Take him down,' said Harry. 'The dead are waiting.' It was Harry's voice that spoke, but she knew that the breath of the dead was on his lips, just as they were on hers.

'They won't be kept waiting any more,' Hermione replied. Her words seemed to spring from her lips and intermingle with the words he had just spoken. She looked down at Karl, who was still on his knees. He looked up at her coolly, still defiant.

'No one's coming to save you,' said Hermione to him.

'The Grey Man is watching you,' replied Karl, his voice suddenly wheezing and ragged.

'Watching and doing nothing,' said Harry.

'He's waiting outside, is he?' said Hermione. 'Too scared to come in here?'

'I wouldn't tempt him if I were you,' said Karl.

'If I were him I wouldn't come in here,' replied Hermione. 'The dead await him, just as they do you.'

'Do you think he's afraid of the dead?' said Karl. Hermione walked closer to him. He tried to struggle but seemed rooted to the spot.

'Aren't you afraid of them?' asked Hermione, looking down on him.

'Just kill me, if you've got the guts,' he replied.

'The dead want to claim you, not kill you,' said Hermione coldly. _And what does that mean_? She didn't know. It wasn't her business to know. She looked up at Harry. His eyes met hers keenly. _Do we have to do this_? She couldn't help but ask him. _We have to deliver him to them_, was his silent reply.

Suddenly there was a loud boom, as if of some great impact against the walls of the Scriptorium. Hermione glanced down at Karl. He smiled up at her with grim satisfaction, but said nothing. She felt her body grow tauter. And the breath of the dead seemed to rise in her, or around her. When she looked at Harry she could see the same pressure pulsing within him.

'It's time,' she said. Harry nodded and dragged Karl to his feet. The prisoner again tried to struggle free, but now his movements were slow and unconvincing. Hermione grabbed him by one arm and Harry by the other and they dragged him to the crypt entrance. He swayed from side to side in their grasp, mumbling something indistinct, something she imagined might be some words of regret. She opened the entrance beneath the Seven-Pointed Circle, leading the way down the dark staircase.

When they reached the place with the two archways, Caleb Priestley was waiting for them. Karl let out a strangled laugh when he saw him, rolling his head from side to side, still in the tight grasp of Harry and Hermione. Caleb contemplated him soberly with his piercing grey eyes.

Karl opened his eyes and stared widely at him.

'Another cry baby,' he said with wild sarcasm. Caleb seemed unmoved.

'Are you ready, Karl?' he said in a low voice.

'I won't be bowed …' Karl replied.

'Your choice,' said Caleb. Dimly another crash could be heard from somewhere above them, and in response the dead seemed to swell in anticipation.

'Take him to the threshold,' said Caleb.

Hermione nodded and they dragged Karl to the dark archway. His body was now almost limp in their grasp. They looked down into the darkness, their bodies trembling at the presence of the dead thronging on the stairs, just out of sight. Then Lillian was before them, right below the arch. Next to her stood a young woman they had never seen before. She smiled, not at them but at something distant and unclear.

Lillian looked at Harry and Hermione, her eyes clear.

'We will take him,' she said placidly, 'but first Camelia wishes to speak to you.'

'Camelia?' said Hermione, looking from Lilian to the woman standing next to her. 'Camelia Morley?'

Camelia Morley nodded and smiled.

'I must speak with my brother,' she said. 'You can take me to him.'

'I can,' Hermione replied. Camelia Morley disappeared from sight, but Hermione felt her breath enter her. She turned to Lillian, who still stood beneath the archway.

'We will take him now,' Lillian said, holding out her hand. Karl's eyes flashed open. For a moment he contemplated Lillian's face. He tried to say something, but no words came out.

'Can you tell us what will happen to him?' said Hermione.

'It is beyond words,' Lillian replied serenely. 'But in the end it will be for his own good.'

Hermione glanced at Harry. He nodded firmly and they relinquished Karl at the same time. He slumped forward, and Lillian quickly took him by the hand and pulled him under the archway. Without a sound, he disappeared into the darkness.

'Lillian,' said Caleb Priestley, stepping into the space vacated by Karl.

Lillian looked at him with something like warmth. She nodded languidly at him. Without a word, Caleb stepped forward and walked down the step, passing Lillian into the darkness.

Again there was a distant, muffled crash far above them. Lillian smiled again, but it was a cold, merciless smile.

'The fool even knocks on the door,' she remarked with grim satisfaction. She reached out her hand. Feeling no fear of being taken down into the darkness, Hermione reached out hers and the two hands intertwined under the archway. Lillian's hand was warm. Lillian reached out her other hand to Harry and drew their hands together, hers slipping free as she united theirs.

'You have a daughter, in the other place,' Hermione suddenly said. 'Did you know? We met her.'

Sadness gleamed in Lillian's eyes.

'I'm dead there too,' she replied. 'I can't see.'

Hermione looked at her.

'I can show you in a memory,' she replied. _Helpless before the pain of the other_, she added in silence.

Lillian nodded serenely. Then she vanished, only a breath of wind passing across Hermione's face. A voice whispered inside her head. _Mercy_, it said. Hermione smiled to herself then glanced at Harry. He was looking intently upwards.

'We'd better go,' he said. 'This won't wait any longer.'

* * *

They left the Headmistress's Office in twos, going down the backstairs and out into the corridors, the headmaster's footsteps lighting their way as they crept into place. Whenever a member of the occupying staff was glimpsed, a pair of wizards set off on their trail, waiting for their quarry to reach an isolated stretch of corridor and then stunning them before they had a chance to react. Even if their magic was detectable, the logic was that no one was going to pay much attention to the use of magic in a place where the safe wizards were ostensibly in control. At least not immediately.

Once the wizards had neutralised their quarry, they quickly returned to the Headmistress's Office. As Professor McGonagall ticked the occupiers off the list she had been keeping, the next team went out into the corridors. As she pored over the list, she kept watch on the superintendent in his office, waiting for the moment when he realised that something was going on and would presumably raise the alarm. A series of phone calls went unanswered before he hurried out of his office. It was nearly time.

'Go and get him now,' she said crisply to Ron and Beth, even though Tobias and Enid hadn't yet returned from their sortie. Ron nodded and the pair disappeared down the back stairs.

They soon heard him in the corridors as he hurried back and forth, his footsteps echoing around the walls.

'He's going back to his office,' Beth hissed to Ron. For a moment, the superintendent turned around, as if he had heard them, then hurried on his way. Quickly they followed him back to his office, but he slammed the door shut before they had a chance to sneak through.

'Ready?' said Ron as they stood in front of the closed door. Beth nodded, but her hand seemed to tremble as she raised her wand.

'Piece of cake. You'll see,' he added, a wry smile on his lips. In response she leant over and kissed him on the cheek, adding a terse '_go_' before he could say anything else.

The superintendent was on the phone again when the door opened.

'This better be …' he began, stopping short when he saw the two wizards pointing their wands at him.

'What the hell do you think you're doing?' he asked in a withering tone, as if he was a teacher who had just caught them smoking on school grounds.

'Oh, just thought I'd come back and visit my old school,' replied Ron nonchalantly. 'Show my friend here around a bit. Thing is, it's changed, and not really for the better. Sorry about that,' he added in a mock aside to Beth.

He was just about to continue when she saw her eyes flash with fear as she glanced at a spot behind them. The next instant a curse flashed at them from the door, its blast throwing them off-balance as it shot past.

'They're intruders, get them!' the superintendent had shouted at the reinforcements who had just arrived.

Ron wheeled around, but before he could fire off a curse, the wizard at the door was already crumpling to the ground. Now Tobias was standing in the doorway. He nodded quickly to Ron and Beth, but the next moment there was alarm in his eyes.

'Behind you! Quick!' he shouted.

They turned again. Two more wizards had appeared in the room, flanking the superintendent's desk. They smiled at Ron and Beth, their curses already streaking towards them. Then from somewhere on Ron's left, another curse was being spoken, a sad, melodious curse in a language he didn't know, followed immediately by a flash of white light. The superintendent and the two safe wizards suddenly began to howl in pain, their faces white and contorted, their wands already clattering on the stone floor. Blood started to seep from their noses, mouths, eyes and ears. The superintendent was already writhing on the floor in a growing pool of blood, while the two wizards were on their knees, eyes wide in pain and horror.

Ron and Beth looked to see who had fired the curse. Standing blithely in the corner of the room, her wand slouching in her hand, was Enid Blackledge, a look of quiet satisfaction on her face.

'Stop it!' Beth shouted at her. 'What sort of horrible curse is that?'

'Mortification,' Enid replied calmly.

'Is it going to kill them?' said Ron.

'I don't know,' Enid replied. 'I usually do it on myself. I stop it when the pain or the blood loss gets too much.'

'Enid, stop it, please,' said Tobias, who had now arrived alongside Ron and Beth.

The victims of Enid's curse were still writhing on the floor, now more whimpering than howling from the pain.

Enid looked at her brother, a vague look of disappointment on her face. Then she whispered a counter-curse. The wizards fell silent and stopped writhing in their own blood.

'They're not dead, are they?' said Ron.

'No, I put them to sleep,' Enid replied, looking thoughtfully at them. Then she looked up at Ron, her pale eyes examining him coldly.

'You owe me, by the way.'

* * *

The building shuddered again as they came out into the open space beneath the great cupola. Hermione looked up at the perforated roof, but it seemed untouched by the blows raining down on it from some unseen source.

'Outside,' said Harry. 'That's where they're waiting.'

Hermione nodded. She felt not dread but anger, the anger of the dead welling up inside her as well.

He took her hand and together they ran down the aisle, back towards the door. As Harry raised his hand to push the great door open, Hermione touched him on the arm. He turned and glanced at her. The shadow around him had never seemed deeper, but his eyes had never shone brighter.

'Now they'll pay,' he said. Then he pushed the door open.

They were waiting for them in the blasted plain, in full array, bearing long, vicious swords. _The hunters. The enemy._ Some of them wore crude masks, others were unmasked. The white bearded rider, the emissary, stood at the centre of the company, grim-faced. The other faces had a similar look about them: grisly, bloodless, ancient.

And even though they themselves were huge, they seemed small compared to the figure towering above them, his charcoal wings folded.

Without any hesitation, Harry and Hermione began to walk swiftly towards them. As they advanced, the anger in them soared into a churning fury that whipped up the dust around them. Now Hermione understood what Harry had felt before in the presence of the emissary. She felt it too, or rather it was not what she felt, but it was what the dead felt.

'We have taken one of yours,' said Hermione in a sonorous voice that echoed around the plain. 'He has gone to face justice.'

'Ten thousand have come for you,' said Harry. 'The hunted, the slaughtered, those whose bones lie in your dens. Your time is over.'

The Grey Man observed them in silence. When they finished speaking, he stepped forward, casting a shadow of his own on them. He was just as Hermione had seen him that night in Unham, only now he was girded with anger. But they saw the fear it cloaked.

'Go back to your citadel,' he said in his deep, cold voice. 'Take shelter there while you can. The dead challenge me. So be it. I will answer them. I spare you only because your flesh would be foul.'

Harry and Hermione locked hands, standing in the shadow cast over them.

'The dead are waiting,' Hermione shouted. The Grey Man laughed derisively. Then he raised his great wings and lifted himself up into the sky, buffeting the ground with hot winds that churned the dust again. He rose up until he was level with the great domed roof of the Scriptorium then slowly began to circle it. He circled seven times, flying faster with each turn. The perforated dome seemed to ripple and shudder under the force exerted on it. Then, after the seventh turn, the Grey Man rose higher and landed on the roof of the dome itself.

'I will throw down the great dome,' he shouted from the sky. 'The dead will be scattered and the living devoured.'

He looked out across the vast expanse, the seemingly endless sleeping city that spread to the horizon.

'This is my domain,' he shouted. He sheathed his long, ancient sword and conjured to his hand a great hammer, made of some dark metal. A cruel, regal smile spread over his face and he raised the hammer high above his head.

'There will be no retribution for any save me,' he shouted. But as he began to bring down the hammer on the roof of the dome, a great moaning began to emanate from inside the Scriptorium, making the building tremble. The drone suddenly grew louder, reverberating inside Hermione's head. With her eyes closed she saw them, arrayed as if in a vast amphitheatre of shadow, the victims of a thousand years, slaughtered on battlefields, in ravaged towns, the massacred, the devoured, the interlopers under the red sky who had fallen prey to the hunters, their bodies rent apart but their souls intact. Gathered at the door for a single purpose: justice. She looked across: even there, Harry was at her side, a grim spectator before the thousand dead. The hammer descended once more, its vibrations waking Hermione and Harry from their vision. The entire roof of the Scriptorium began to fissure, from seven points on its circumference, the cracks moving rapidly inwards. Then the roof began to splinter and crumble, a great shadow leaping from within, wrapping itself around the Grey Man, writhing high into the air above him and spreading outwards in every direction. The drone reached a deafening paroxysm then went silent, leaving only the remnants of a dark cloud hanging over the shattered dome. The Grey Man was gone, dragged down into the depths. The other servants of the Grey Man had seemingly vanished from the plain. Whether they had been taken by the dead or had simply fled, she didn't know.

'Harry, what do we …' she began to say. But he wasn't there at her side any more. She scanned the plain in front of the Scriptorium, but it looked empty. _Has he gone to join the dead?_ _Should I go back to the archway and call out his name_? The prospect was almost unbearable, but she ran back to the door of the Scriptorium and tried to open it. The door now seemed to be locked. As she banged on the door, a kind of echo of the drone started up from within. She turned her back on the door, feeling tears starting to roll down her face. _There's only one way to go to the archway now._ Then another thought occurred to her. She pulled up her sleeve and looked at her wrist. The bracelet's lights had never seemed so bright, their movement more vigorous than ever, almost triumphant. She looked up at the sky, as if the waking world was somehow above them.


	77. The penitence of Lillian Herrick - Ch 30

30\. The Union of Wands

The gates to Hogwarts were still hanging open, the iron distorted by the force of the charm she had used to open them, and the car still lay abandoned a little way up the road. _Of course this is the place I would return to._ The night was cold and a little damp, but she scarcely noticed it._ Harry's so far from here._ She walked quickly towards the car, stopping a few metres away from it and contemplating it in the dark. For a moment she considered setting it alight, but thought better of committing an act of such petulance. Instead she raised her hand and pointed it at the car's windshield. At her command the Seven-Pointed Circle began to carve itself into the glass; next to the Circle she carved two superimposed runes: _repent_ and _relinquish_. She glanced up at the lights of the castle in the distance. _Not tonight. There's nothing for me here._ Then she was gone.

The place she had come to was very dark, the only sign she was standing on a hill coming from the distant lights stretching out down below. She stood very still, listening to a faint wind blowing in the sky above her, relishing the mere fact of being alive. _And of having something to live for._ She would wait here until he arrived; she knew he would come. She didn't want to see him in the hospital; she had seen him there so many times and she couldn't bear it anymore. It would take him some time to get there, but that didn't matter. She was almost tempted to use her old magic to cast a warming light around her, as an act of defiance, but instead she used the Circle. _I don't want any interruptions._

* * *

Harry Potter's eyes were wide open. Everything arond him exerted an irresistible fascination: every face, every building, every street name seemed incredibly vivid and teeming with detail. Even the clouds in the sky and the sound of his own feet on the pavement brought tears to his eyes.

That was how it had been since he had woken up numb in bed, in a hospital room he had never seen before. The staff on the ward had been amazed: '_Harry Swift's actually awake!_' he had heard one of the nurses exclaim to a colleague in the corridor outside his room. _That's not my name_. But he went along with them, answering _Harry_ when they asked him his name. The questions and the tests began almost immediately: he submitted good-humouredly to the nurses' procedures and answered the doctors' questions calmly and without any mistakes.

'You're a strange case,' the doctor had told him. 'We had expected you to wake after a few days. When the days turned to weeks and then months, we wondered if you would ever wake. Recently things were looking worse for you. And yet here you are, in as good a state as anyone could have imagined.'

'I am a strange case,' he replied. 'I think I can explain why. At least to some extent.'

'Tell me,' said the doctor.

'Some years ago I had a… a sort of near-death experience.'

'I never saw that in your notes.'

'It wasn't… in this country. Anyway, I felt a bit like I got off too lightly that time, so this time, I felt that if death wanted to claim me, I was ready to go. I had no fear: it's a place I feel like I know.'

'So what brought you back?'

'There's someone I couldn't leave behind.'

He walked as quickly as he could, even though his legs hurt with every step and his shoulders ached every time he swung his arms. He hoped his pale, sickly face and stiff gait wasn't too off-putting to the people who passed him on the street and who had sat opposite him in the tube trains he had taken across London, from its southern edge, into the centre and then out the other side, all the time a single destination in his mind.

He had in his mind the image of a hilltop, or rather two hilltops, one superimposed on the other: in one image the hilltop was carefully landscaped, with a marquee at its centre; in the other it was empty and overgrown. He knew the name of the hill too: _Blizzard Hill_. Why he had to meet her there he wasn't sure, but there was something very important about it. He was also quite sure that he was late: getting out of hospital had taken longer than he would have wanted.

The first familiar face he had seen was Serena Lynch, who came as soon as they telephoned her. '_Your sister will be here in a little while. She's over the moon,'_ a nurse had told her. He smiled at that too, the conspiracy that had kept him hidden gradually revealing itself to him. He had hugged Serena so fiercely that it was almost as if they were brother and sister. Almost immediately he noticed that the sound of Serena's voice had a calming effect on him, its familiarity the result of his hearing it all that time from down in the depths.

'I need to get out of here,' he had said to her when the nurses left them alone, stretching his hand out of the bed and gripping hers. 'I have to go somewhere.' She had brought him the clothes he had been wearing the day the Ministry of Magic had risen and given him the address of Caius's safe house. He promised he would come. He listened keenly to her account of all he had missed. The last thing she gave him before she left, kissing him warmly on the cheek, her eyes streaming with tears, was his wand.

Mid-morning, after submitting to yet more tests, he sneaked out of the hospital, back in his old clothes, his wand stowed in his pocket. On his back he carried a rucksack containing some provisions Serena had brought him. He had left a note for the nurses saying that he would return to the hospital as soon as possible, but he had an urgent appointment first. He stopped at a convenience store to buy a bottle of water, a sandwich, a chocolate bar and some chewing gum, the experience of standing in a shop and handing over the money to the man behind the counter almost mind-blowing. _Don't do any magic_, Serena had told him. Something called the Array registered all magic now, apparently. He had promised he would be careful.

* * *

The sky was cloudless and divided into bands of pale blue, pink and deep red. The air was cold, promising a chill spring morning. No wind blew to disturb the long grass on the empty hill. No one was out jogging, and no one was walking their dog. During the night a group of teenagers had come and lit a fire, passing around joints and bottles of spirits and even telling stories of the witches that once met there. But they had fled when they saw a light moving through the trees, one of them at least having the presence of mind to stamp out the fire.

She stood beside the birch tree, her breath turning to steam, in the clearing where she had kissed him in another life. She glanced through the trees, searching for a sound or sign of movement on the empty expanse along the hilltop. She felt herself trembling, only partly from the cold.

At the sound of footsteps passing softly through dead leaves she looked around.

'Thought I might find you here.'

They embraced without words.

'Do you know why here?' she asked, keeping her arms around his neck and examining his face: he looked pale and haggard, but the shadow was gone, and his eyes were clear. _I must look the same._

'When I woke up I had a picture in my head of you standing on this hill, in a pale dress on a sunny day.'

'Do you remember that day?'

'In a way I do. It's incredibly distant but at the same time completely real.'

She smiled and ran her finger down his cheek.

'That's how I remember it too.'

She paused, hardly daring to question him further.

'Do you like how we are there?'

'We're just as we should be. But it doesn't change anything.'

'Doesn't it?' she asked, not sure if she should be pleased or disappointed.

'Or rather it confirms what I already know.'

'What's that then?'

'That you're everything to me. More than that. That you and I are everything to each other.'

She smiled and pulled him a little closer.

'That's a good way of describing us,' she replied. 'But it's not quite enough. I want you to have _all of me_ as well.'

And she kissed him on the mouth.

He returned the kiss, putting his hand to the back of her neck and pulling her close. Then he pushed her against the tree. Finally they broke apart and looked at one another, wide eyed in amazement. Both had tears in their eyes.

'You're awake,' she said at last, putting her hand on his cheek and stroking it. 'How do you feel?'

'Fine,' he replied as nonchalantly as he could manage.

'Do you remember everything?

'I think so. You'll have to quiz me at some point.'

'I'll do that,' she said with a smile. Then she was more serious.

'And do you remember the island, the Scriptorium, the archway, the dead?'

'Yes, I remember all that too.'

'And you know how close you were to… how close we were to…'

He put his arm around her narrow, fragile shoulders and pulled her against him.

'I know.'

'At least this time I got to come with you.'

He lifted her head so that he was looking right at her.

'One day we'll go together,' he said. 'Because I'm not planning to live a second of this life without you.'

'I feel the same way,' she replied. 'Although I don't know - and don't want to know - how that would work in practice. But Harry, now that everything's clear between us, can I tell you something that's been troubling me?'

'Of course.'

'Well, it's just that... I mean I feel there's a risk that we love each other so much that we ignore the rest of the world. Maybe that sounds strange but it's a real fear I have.'

He nodded.

'It doesn't sound strange. I've thought the same thing myself sometimes, although I'd put it a bit differently: basically, all this time we couldn't see anyone else because we were always running towards each other.'

'You think so?'

She smiled and kissed him gently on the lips.

'Yeah, that's what I reckon. And now we don't have to worry about that any more, we can start trying to make amends, at least for whoever lets us make amends. And then one day we'll really have to start devoting ourselves to someone else.'

Her stomach did a flip of excitement as she grasped his meaning.

'After all this do you think we really could? I mean, am I even capable of it?'

Harry pulled her tight against him.

'Do you really think it's not in our destiny?'

She looked at him and smiled back.

They walked from the small clearing to the larger one on the top of Blizzard Hill. The hill had a desolate air, the grass dry and bereft of colour, the trees still bare. They walked around the hilltop, hand in hand, recalling fragments of the afternoon in the other place.

'It's funny,' said Harry. 'On the one hand I want us to step into that scene, but on the other I want us to stay as far away from it as possible.'

'I feel the same way,' Hermione replied. 'I miss Fred but I can't bear that we should lose Ron.' She shivered at the prospect.

'Serena started to tell me about what's been happening while I was away,' said Harry. 'Maybe there's a chance for us all. We must still be able to do something to help, whatever physical state I'm in.'

'We will,' Hermione replied, squeezing his hand even tighter. 'But now I think of it, why are you even out of hospital, Harry?'

'I left them a note,' he replied, looking slightly embarrassed. 'I promised I'd go back.'

'Well, I think that's where we should go first, to make sure you're ok. Then we'll go and find Ron.'

'Ok, if you think we should.'

'I definitely think so…' She stopped mid-sentence and gasped a bit. 'Oh gosh, I was going to call you darling.'

He smiled and pushed a strand of hair out of her face.

'So call me it.'

She pulled him close and whispered _my darling_ into his ear.

Suddenly he reached into his pocket.

'That reminds me,' he said, pulling out a silver ring and holding it out to her. It was her ring, the ring she had passed to him as a test of her ability to use the Circle. 'It's time I gave this back to you.'

She took the ring and held it up, turning it over in her hand. She looked quickly at him.

'In my dreams I kept remembering that I had lost it,' he said. 'Each time I would desperately start looking for it, but then I would forget what I was looking for. Over and over. When I woke up it had been in my pocket all along.'

She glanced at the ring once more then slipped it onto the finger where she used to wear it.

'That'll do for now,' she said. He clearly took her meaning. Then she put her arm in Harry's.

'Let's go,' she said.

'Are you still taking me back to hospital?' he asked in mock protest.

* * *

Ron Weasley looked down from the front door of Hogwarts, a broad grin on his mouth. The grin was mostly one of satisfaction. Things seemed to be working out reasonably well.

The great courtyard was empty, but beyond its gates a police cordon had been set up. Milling around behind the cordon were a number of journalists, police officers and film crews. Several cameras were pointed at the school, presumably filming in case anything interesting happened. Further back, behind a second, more fortified, cordon, stood a mob of sorts, brandishing banners daubed with anti-magical slogans. From time to time, they would also chant their slogans. A kind of small tent city lay behind them on a hill: the witch hunters were keeping up a permanent presence outside Hogwarts. Ron's favourite slogan from among the banners was '_You'll never teach witchcraft again!_' The protesters were led and organised by representatives of the Safe Magic Campaign, each flanked by safe wizards. Ron scoffed at the sight of them: he could even recognise some of their faces from among those they had captured and disarmed the night of the takeover.

The now ex-superintendent of Hogwarts had been in charge of the protesters for a while; now his role seemed to have been taken over by a tall woman with long flowing dark hair. _His wife_, Isaac Edwards had told him. He had kicked up a huge fuss when the detachment from the Rhinns had gathered all its prisoners in the great hall of Hogwarts. They were all looking at lengthy prison sentences at the very least, he had yelled at them, if they were lucky. Seemingly it hadn't taken him very long to recover from the effects of being mortified by Enid Blackledge, which was probably for the better. Ron had sent him and the other prisoners out across the courtyard two days later, under the gaze of the police and the press cameras. By that time he was heartily sick of the superintendent's ranting. Still, the fact that he had a good case for pressing criminal charges against Enid had had the positive effect of causing her to do her usual disappearing act.

And in any case, they had no need for prisoners. Since the wizards who had retaken Hogwarts were out in the open, they could use magic at will. So the first thing they had done was to restore the school's magical defences. Professor McGonagall had taken great satisfaction in arranging that.

While the press and police and the witch hunters watched, wizards continued to come and go unseen, following the Headmaster's footsteps. Some of the wizards that had taken part in the raid had left to spread the word. Some had returned with reinforcements. Other wizards had come of their own accord, having seen the news on television. _They all know us now._ There were more than sixty wizards in Hogwarts by that time, mostly former pupils. The hope was to persuade parents of current pupils to agree to allow their children back to school, at least for a symbolic lesson. Professor McGonagall had even agreed to teach it in the courtyard, in front of the cameras if necessary.

No one was going to dislodge them from Hogwarts, not for the time being at least. The Safe Magic Campaign wanted to press charges against them for trespassing and kidnapping. Only Professor McGonagall had produced a document, apparently drawn up countless years earlier, with a muggle solicitor no less, attesting that the castle was granted in perpetuity for the use of Hogwarts School. On top of that, she showed them her contract of employment, also apparently authenticated by a muggle notary public, which appointed her to the task of running the school. So there was no question of kidnapping: they had actually been ejecting the real trespassers from their premises. Then, no sooner had the witch hunters' lawyers started protesting, but Imogen Sontley from the Agency for Magical Affairs arrived. She dispatched the witch hunters and their lawyers away with a withering efficiency that was reminiscent of Hermione in her heyday. Stephen Morley's arrest on charges of conspiracy to murder had thrown the entire organisation into disrepute. '_Come back when the inquiry is over!_' had been her parting shot to the lawyers as they departed the doorstep of Hogwarts.

The witch hunters outside resumed their slogans with renewed vigour. Someone even tried throwing something at Hogwarts, but it disintegrated when it came into contact with the school's magical protection. Ron chuckled as he watched a safe wizard irritably berate the protester, presumably for wasting his time.

'They look so weak now,' said a voice at his side. It sounded like Hermione's.

'Nothing like how they were outside the Ministry,' added a voice that sounded like Harry's.

Ron glanced around him, his mind reeling. But apparently Hermione was standing just to his left and Harry just to his right.

'What on earth …' Ron began. Then all he could add was 'You look as if you're real.'

'We are,' said Hermione.

'And alive,' added Harry.

'So how is that you're …'

'On Hogwarts' grounds?' asked Hermione in a matter-of-fact tone, her face perfectly serious. 'It's amazing what you can do with the Seven-pointed Circle.'

They all hugged once Ron was over the shock of seeing them. He hadn't quite believed Caius when he had taken him aside the day before to tell him that Harry was awake. He certainly hadn't expected him to be even sitting up in bed, let alone out of hospital. He hadn't expected to see Hermione either. It had been Isaac Edwards who told him that she'd been seen at Pendle House the night Lillian Herrick had been murdered with the Witchfinder's blessing, but that she had disappeared again straight away. But he knew that she'd done what she had set out to achieve when she left Muirton Tower. He wondered how much she'd been through. Judging by the look of her, a lot. Apart from looking pale and thin, there was a weird expression in her eyes. It was as if there was something different about her _presence_. He wasn't sure how else to describe it. And he could see the same strange expression in Harry's green eyes as in Hermione's dark brown eyes: it made them look like some kind of slightly disturbed twins. The thought occurred to him that these were some other wizards, or some other creatures, masquerading as his oldest friends. But as he looked at them and listened to their voices, he felt sure it was them. And that wasn't the only thing that was different: it was obvious from the way they looked at each other.

'You've taken charge here, is that right?' said Harry.

'Sort of,' replied Ron. 'But McGonagall's really in charge.'

'I bet she is,' replied Harry.

'You've been doing a really good job,' added Hermione. Ron smiled. Praise from her really meant something. If only she seemed a bit more normal, he would be even happier.

'You know what's been going on, then?' said Ron.

'From the newspapers,' said Hermione.

'And from TV,' added Harry.

Ron peered at him.

'How come you're even out of bed, anyway? Don't get me wrong, I'm glad to see you're looking so … err … well. But I thought you'd be resting or something.'

'He came back from the dead once, remember,' said Hermione. 'I should think waking from a coma was a walk in the park in comparison.'

'Something like that,' said Harry with a grin at her.

'Well, since you're here,' said Ron, 'perhaps you'd like to join our little discussion group,' said Ron. He gestured through the open door of Hogwarts.

'What are you discussing?' asked Harry.

'Oh, just the future of wizarding society,' Ron replied.

'And who's in your little discussion group?' asked Hermione, rather drily.

'Um … a wide cross-section of views,' replied Ron. 'We've got McGonagall, and Hagrid, and Neville … a few people from the Ministry … Kingsley for one!'

'Kingsley's here?' asked Harry, his eyes flashing with interest.

'And there's your mate Isaac Edwards,' Ron continued, nodding at Hermione.

'And who else?' she asked, one eyebrow slightly arched.

'Um … Draco's there too.'

'Draco?' said Harry, apparently amused. 'It's first name terms, now, is it?'

'Fair enough, Malfoy then,' Ron conceded. 'And there's even Tobias Destrument.'

'That is a cross-section of views,' Hermione remarked.

'Shall we go in then?' asked Harry.

Ron nodded. They walked through the door and headed to the great hall. The corridors were as empty as ever, but they walked casually, as if the school's emptiness was simply down to it being after the end of term.

A round table had been arranged in the centre of the great hall, the tables on which the houses sat pushed to the sides to accommodate it. _How weird it looks_, Hermione thought to herself. Animated conversation was raging among those sitting round the table.

'Remember these two?' Ron asked with a smirk as they reached the round table. Everyone fell silent.

As Ron had said, it was a wide cross-section of views: there were Professor McGonagall, Neville, Hagrid, Arthur and Ginny Weasley; then Caius, Henoc, Isaac Edwards and Argenta Coyle; Kingsley Shacklebolt, along with Mortimer Knott, Luther Penhaligon and Myra Tremayne from the old Ministry of Magic; Fulke and Edmund Tournier and indeed, Draco Malfoy and Tobias Destrument. Some of the faces were friendly, others ambivalent, some seemingly embarrassed. No one looked more confused than Ginny. Hermione couldn't help noticing that she was sitting next to Henoc. Harry and Hermione looked at the faces around the table, and the faces all looked back at them. The silence continued until Neville said:

'Well, say something then!'

'I've been unconscious for months and you want me to give a speech?' asked Harry, his eyes gleaming mischievously.

'Anyway,' added Hermione, clapping her hand on Ron's shoulder. 'Ron's in charge here. We're just here to help out.'

Harry and Hermione took up a pair of empty seats between Edmund Tournier and Draco Malfoy. Harry greeted Tournier with cool politeness, while Hermione gave Draco a rather pointed look that seemed to put him on edge. Ron went and took up his seat in the spare chair next to Kingsley Shacklebolt. The Minister of Magic looked tired but more relaxed and serene than in the old days of the Ministry.

'Well,' Ron began, 'as you know, Imogen Sontley from the Agency for Magical Affairs has bought us some time. Plus, with Morley under arrest for conspiracy to murder, there's a big dent in the Safe Magic Campaign's credibility.'

'And meanwhile a lot of muggles are suddenly questioning whether wizards are so bad after all,' added Mortimer Knott.

'All of which we need to use to our advantage,' said Ron, 'to get inside the Ministry of Magic and get everyone out of there.'

'Preferably in one piece,' added Isaac Edwards.

'Which could be a big problem, from what I understand,' said Ron, suddenly reaching into his pocket and taking out a large piece of paper, which he unfolded on the table in front of him.

'Elias Rathbone has provided us with some rather interesting material,' he continued.

'Didn't he go from working for the Ministry to being one of Stephen Morley's safe wizards?' remarked Isaac Edwards.

'True,' replied Ron. 'But he's back on our side now. Until very recently he was working inside the Ministry, guarding our wizards. But yesterday he gave himself up.'

'That's convenient,' said Hagrid.

'Don't worry, we've got him under our protection,' Ron replied. 'Isn't that right, Caius?'

Caius Hanmer smirked and nodded.

'He's under the protection of the Coven of the White Tooth. Since he used to work in building maintenance at the Ministry, his knowledge of the building is proving rather handy. We've been very busy comparing his map of the inside of the Ministry with ours. He's also been able to give us details of how the Ministry's currently being run.'

'Why should we trust him?' said Neville.

'Whether he's come over to us out of conviction,' remarked Kingsley, 'or because he's a coward who's sensed which way the wind is blowing, doesn't really matter. The information tallies with what we already know about what's going on inside the Ministry.'

'Elias has confirmed that although Morley is sort of out of action for now,' Ron continued, 'Mr Marchelow is still running things at the Ministry. Elias warns us to be very careful with him.'

'And rightly so,' added Isaac. 'Marchelow is potentially worse than Morley.'

'All the more reason to get inside now,' replied Ron.

'Yes, but forcing our way in will be a public relations disaster,' replied Isaac.

'The television cameras will be watching,' added Kingsley. 'Which should at least force the witch hunters to behave themselves.'

'Or appear to behave themselves,' remarked Argenta.

'Any casualties would be made to look like they were our fault,' added Isaac. 'And the numbers of casualties could be high.'

Ron scratched his chin. It was rather stubbly, as he was toying with the idea of a beard.

'I take your point,' he replied. 'But if this Marchelow is as bad as you say, he might already be doing goodness knows what in there. Particularly as his back's against the wall now.'

'Don't forget that the witch hunters plan to release the wizards at some point, in order to hunt them down out of sight later on,' added Caius.

'You're right,' said Isaac. 'These are real risks. Both of them.'

'So how do we get inside? Gently, so to speak.'

'Perhaps we don't need to get inside. Not all of us anyway.'

Ron turned around. It was Hermione who had spoken.

'What do you mean?'

'Should we go and stand outside and ask them nicely to let us in?' asked Draco drily. Hermione scowled at him and he looked away.

'I think going and standing outside would be a good idea,' said Hermione. 'Hiding's useless. We need everyone to see us. Let them see us standing there peacefully in front of the Ministry, particularly the enemy currently squatting inside it. Let them dare to try and attack when the cameras are on us.'

'And then what?' said Neville.

Ron smiled.

'Then our people inside rise up.'

'An uprising of prisoners?' said Luther Penhaligon. 'Do you think they're in any shape to do that?'

'I reckon they'll be good enough,' Harry remarked. 'If the witch hunters are facing a double diversion, with wizards lined up outside and wizards rising up inside, then it may be possible to start getting our people out without them noticing.' He turned to Hermione.

'That's what you meant, isn't it?'

She nodded.

'There could be ways of weakening the magical protections the safe wizards have put around the Ministry,' Kingsley remarked, a subtle smile on his lips.

'Particularly as the Ministry's protection is mainly based on the idea that they can detect any magic being done and neutralise any undesirables before they get near the place,' Caius added.

'And on the idea that no rogue wizards are going to march up and start attacking the Ministry anyway,' added Ron. 'We just need a backway in and out now.'

'We know one,' said Isaac. 'We followed it all the way up from the Thames into the Ministry. The door was already open when we got there.'

'What's that?' said Ron.

'It runs from the Thames right into the lowest levels of the Ministry,' Harry added. 'It's where the Ministry was breached, the day it rose up to the surface.'

'Won't they have shut it?' said Ron.

'Why would they?' Hermione retorted. 'I doubt they even know about it. It was Lillian who found it and opened it.'

'Too bad she's dead,' remarked Ron. 'She's got a lot to answer for.'

'She's answered for it already,' replied Hermione quickly.

For a few moments there was only silence. Isaac Edwards was the first to break the silence.

'We could follow the tunnel all the way into the Ministry,' he said evenly. 'It leads to a very quiet corner where I doubt that there's much security, beyond the general protection offered by the Array. And that only detects magic.'

'Sounds good,' said Caius. 'But how would you get from this back door to where all the prisoners are held? Even if we organise this diversion, Marchelow is bound to keep them guarded.'

'We can send them a message before that,' said Harry.

'How?' said Ron.

'Patronuses,' Harry replied.


	78. The penitence of Lillian Herrick - Ch 31

31\. Patronus army

A thin figure dressed in black stood by the railings, seemingly oblivious to the pouring rain. The afternoon was dank and murky under a thick layer of dark grey cloud. She looked up at the house: it was set a comfortable way back from the road, like all the other houses in the neighbourhood. _New money_, she thought as she contemplated the house's brash, double-fronted facade. _But then so is my family._

A single light was on in an upstairs room. _That was my room_, said a voice. Not her voice. _He goes there sometimes_.

Hermione glanced about to see if anyone was coming towards her along the pavement. No one. Just a car passing in the street. Almost reluctantly she began the incantations. Suddenly the grey sky was tinted deep red. She opened her eyes and walked up to the metal gates. The gravel under her feet sounded distant and muffled as she went up the driveway, but presumably much louder to anyone in a room on the streetside of the house. Nothing stirred, not even when she drew up at the front door and pushed it open. The wide entrance hall was in semi-darkness, but a light was visible at the top of the stairs, at one end of the white-balustraded landing.

She walked silently up the stairs then across the landing, pausing as she reached a half-open door. An unseen force there seemed to restrain her.

_Don't you want to_? she asked.

_I do_, came the reply, _but I'm so sad. I'm so sad for him_.

Hermione shivered. _If he'd have got his way _… But she shrugged the feeling away. _I understand_.

He was sitting at a desk facing the far wall, apparently writing something. The room still looked more or less like a teenager's bedroom. She looked at the mauve colour scheme on the curtains and the bedspread, the collection of photos next to the bed, the soft toys arranged too neatly on the pillow. _This is his torture chamber_.

He turned suddenly, even though she hadn't made a sound. His face had a yellow-grey hue about it. He had lost weight, no doubt from the stress of the criminal charges against him. Only the eyes seemed bigger.

'I would ask how you got in here,' he said at last. 'But I think I know the answer.'

'Yes, I suppose you do,' replied Hermione.

'You haven't won,' he said coldly.

'Not yet.'

'Nor will you.'

She looked more intently at him. After a few moments of returning her gaze, he flinched.

'This is the house you grew up in,' she said in a softer voice.

He said nothing at first. Perhaps he was trying to fathom how she could have the nerve to stand there in front of him.

'It is,' he muttered after a long pause. 'Not that it's any of your business.'

'Magic has been done here,' she remarked, her eyes casting round the bedroom. 'And I don't mean by me. Magic was done here years ago; you can still feel the trace. Or I can, anyway.'

He looked bleakly at her and said nothing.

'I suppose you've brought your wand with you.' He said the word 'wand' with distaste.

'I have,' she replied, drawing it from her pocket and holding it loosely in her hand. That very morning she and Harry had gone to the featureless field where she had left it and retrieved it from the ground.

'You could use it to kill me,' he remarked in the same taut, contemptuous voice.

'I could.'

'Is that why you're here?' he continued, his tone more genial, almost amused. He stood up and held his arms out wide. They shook a little as he held them aloft. 'Perhaps you should,' he added.

She smiled grimly.

'Why does everyone keep asking me to kill them?' she asked.

A thin scowl spread across his lips.

'You find that surprising, a … person such as you?'

There was no question of justifying herself. Least of all to him.

'I'm not here to make any confessions,' she answered at last, in a low voice. 'If anyone has something to confess, that would be you.'

'That is between me and the law of this country,' he replied.

'I'm not interested in that,' replied Hermione coldly. 'I know what you did.'

'Oh you do, do you? So you were there, hiding like a rat in the cellar?'

She leaned a little closer to him.

'Don't worry about what I saw or didn't see. Worry about the dead. You can't hide from them,' she whispered to him.

He flinched again, his eyes wide for a moment. The next moment his composure was restored.

'Why would it surprise me to learn that you communicate with the dead? Or at least imagine yourself to …'

She sighed.

'I don't expect _you_ to believe _me_.'

He folded his arms.

'That being unquestionably the case,' he replied, 'I suggest you leave.'

She looked at him insistently, her dark eyes clouded and distant.

'I just want one thing. Just tell me something.'

There was a look of uncertainty in his eyes.

'Go on,' he said at last, in the lowest of voices.

'All I want,' she continued, 'is for you to tell me that you loved your sister and that you miss her more than anything in the world.'

'None of your business,' he said, with a look that was somewhere between a scowl and a grimace. 'Not in the slightest.'

'Then why are you here in Camelia's bedroom?'

'Get out of here. Don't speak her name.'

'You may find it hard to believe,' she continued, 'but I want to help you'.

At this he started to laugh.

'You really are sick.'

There was a small mirror with a curving metal frame on the wall. She glanced into it. She didn't look well, she had to admit.

'I probably am,' she replied. 'Sick and weak. Not much more than a hollow vessel. And I can't keep this inside me any longer.'

She reached out her hand and grabbed him by the arm. At first he tried vaguely to struggle free, his gaze trapped in hers. Then as he looked _and saw_, he ceased resisting.

'_This can't be real,' he began, in a faltering voice._

'_Stephen,' she said. 'It is.'_

_His eyes were wider and wider._

'_So that's your hand, holding my arm?'_

'_This is as close as I can get to you.'_

'_This must be …'_

'_Witchcraft?'_

'_It's why you're …'_

'_Maybe, but that seems so far away now.'_

'_Not for me.'_

'_I know. Make an allowance, just this once. I don't mind. There's no other way for us to see each other. Don't you want to see me?'_

'_I do, of course I do. But not like this. There's another way.'_

'_No. Don't follow me here, Stephen. Wait till it's your time.'_

'_What, won't I see you if I do?'_

'_There are some here who would claim you.'_

'_Claim me?'_

'_You're not ready.'_

'_What would happen to me?'_

'_It's not something I have any way of knowing. I only know that they would claim you, the ones who are dead because of you.'_

'_Don't you understand why I've done all this?'_

'_The acts of the living are obscure to us. And even if we catch some dim glimpse of them, they are beyond our reckoning. And when the door is open, those with a grievance against the living swarm towards it.'_

'_The door is open now, apparently. This witch has opened it.'_

'_What does it matter if she's a witch? I was too.'_

'_And it cost you your life.'_

'_The details are so distant now, I can scarcely remember. I have no reproach for anyone.'_

'_No reproach for me?'_

'_No, Stephen.'_

'_Camelia, what do you do there? What's it like?'_

'_I can't explain it to the living. Not even to the girl who opened the door.'_

'_What do you want me to do now? Give up everything? Go quietly to prison and accept my disgrace?'_

'_Stephen, the dead don't give advice to the living_.'

He sat in the chair, his legs splayed out, his eyes staring at nothing, wide and tear-streaked.

Hermione stood by the door, looking at him in silence.

'I'm going now,' she said.

He glanced across at her.

'We will empty the Ministry of Magic,' she added coolly.

'Do what you like,' he replied. 'I'm not in charge there anymore.'

* * *

Lincoln's Inn Fields. Six o'clock in the evening. Darkness falling rapidly and lights going on in the venerable old buildings overlooking the square. Workers leaving their offices, moving briskly around the pavements and cutting across the square, heading for Holborn or Fleet Street.

One thing out of the ordinary: a police truck and two squad cars parked by the railings on the south side of the square. A row of police officers stand calmly on the pavement, apparently peering into the square.

'Any trouble?' A tall, gangly man in a long dark trench coat, collar up and spectacles glinting off the streetlight, pauses to accost one of the policemen.

'Everything's under control, sir,' replies the policeman peremptorily. The man nods and strides off into the dusk, umbrella swinging by his side.

Then seemingly out of nowhere, more than a hundred figures dressed in black robes appear in the circular gravelled space in the middle of the square, perhaps startling even the hard-faced office workers crossing the square just at that moment. Some quicken their pace, disappearing under the cover of the mounting dusk as they make for the gates. Others stop to stare at the crowd suddenly gathered there.

Some of the figures in black are holding placards and banners, with signs that read things like 'Genuine witch — no need to be scared', 'Open the Ministry of Magic' and 'Release our friends'.

'Ready, everyone?' shouts a young man with red hair and dark ginger stubble. The black figures murmur and nod, their bodies mingling with the darkness. The red-haired man holds up a piece of paper. 'See this?' he says in a loud voice. 'This is our protest permit. The muggle police have authorised us. So there shouldn't be any trouble. Or not too much anyway.'

The protesters marshal their ranks, turning to face the southeast corner of the park. Then they begin to march solemnly and silently out of the narrow gate, streaming across the road and heading down Serle Street, making for the back-end of the Court of Justice, now accompanied by the police in their vanguard and at the rear.

* * *

Once the protesters had marched away, a little knot of figures remained behind in the centre of the square. They were dressed in regular street clothes and held neither placards nor wands in their hands. They looked at each other with an air of casual familiarity, apparently oblivious to the black-robed marchers that had just set off from that place.

'Do you think they _will_ have any trouble?' asked Argenta Coyle, her question thrown out at the other five figures standing around her.

'They'll be heckled at the very least,' replied Isaac Edwards in his customary bleak tone.

'Funny how it's come to this,' remarked Caius Hanmer. 'Wizards marching through the streets of London, with a muggle police escort.'

'We can thank Imogen Sontley for that,' replied Hermione Granger. 'She's turning out to be a very useful friend. But I'm afraid there will be trouble anyway.'

'Will they be ok?' asked Argenta.

'The more of them there are, the safer they'll be,' replied Isaac.

'There's not many so far,' said Osian Kendrick.

'I think there will be enough in the end,' replied Hermione.

'I'd quite like to get stuck into these witch hunters myself,' said Harry Potter, looking grimly out over the square and beyond into the London evening.

'Once we've done what we have to do, we can go out and join the fun,' said Hermione, gently touching his arm.

'Anyway,' said Caius. 'We'd better get this over with.'

'Yes,' said Hermione. 'Otherwise the prisoners really will have to blast their own way out of the Ministry.'

The little group set off. To begin with they followed the route the march was taking, making their way round to Chancery Lane and then onto Fleet Street, mingling with office workers on their way to tube and train stations or making for the pubs. When they reached Fleet Street, they could make out the back of the march as it headed up towards Ludgate Circus, flanked by its police escort. A distant roar could be heard coming from its general vicinity. If it had anything to do with the march, it was presumably witch hunters: the march itself was intended as a silent march. As they walked along Fleet Street, a group of burly men barged past them, seemingly trying to catch up with the march. Instinctively Harry reached into his pocket, but Hermione shot out her hand and stopped him.

'I want to as well, but we can't this time.'

He nodded quickly and they walked on, turning quickly off Fleet Street onto Bouverie Street, then cutting through the back streets. As they passed St Bride's churchyard Hermione glanced across at Harry, who was walking next to her, his face still pale and drawn under the street lights. He returned her glance with a conscious look.

'I got what I deserved,' he said in a low voice. 'Imagine sitting there talking to you and not knowing who you were. That was a fitting punishment.'

By way of response she slipped her hand into his. They continued on streets running parallel to Ludgate Hill and St Paul's Churchyard, heading towards Mansion House then on towards Cannon Street Station

They had scarcely drawn a glance as they climbed over the side of the embankment and dropped down to the entrance to the Dowgate.

'That's the benefit of being in central London in the rush hour,' remarked Argenta.

The last time Rachel Thirlwell had led them there, but it had been decided that this time only wizards would go into the Ministry. Rachel had instead taken the opportunity to go home to her parents. '_I'll watch out for you on the news_,' she had remarked brightly at their parting. Since Hermione, Isaac and Harry had been through the entrance before, they would lead the way through the gate and into the opening in the Ministry. If the entrance had somehow closed, Hermione figured she could reopen it. If the Ministry's rise to the surface had destroyed the tunnel, things were going to be more difficult, but Isaac was confident that this wouldn't be the case. _No magically-built construction was destroyed when the Ministry surfaced_, he had said. _Warped, yes, but not destroyed_. Once they were inside, the Coven's work mapping the inside of the Ministry would be vital in leading them through the catacombs of the Ministry. Argenta had come along too — ultimately it was her field too.

Harry and Caius lifted down the grating covering the entrance. The damp air that leaked out of the darkness seemed vaguely familiar. One by one, they went inside.

* * *

Faces stared at them, car honked their horns, and the occasional missile was thrown at them, but the march continued, first up Fleet Street, across Ludgate Circus and onto Ludgate Hill, which instead of leading straight to St Paul's Cathedral as it once did, now curved round to the left, hiding the cathedral's facade behind a bend. Sorcery Square lay between St Paul's and Mansion House.

The faces of the marchers were solemn, distant, fixed on an unseen destination. They scarcely even glanced at the people staring at them from the opposite pavement, jeering or shouting abuse. Theoretically the police escort was there to protect them, but a low-level charm had been cast around them to offer some protection against projectiles and the like. Ron Weasley and Kingsley Shacklebolt stood at the very front of the procession. Behind them were wizards from all over the country, some who had taken part in the retaking of Hogwarts, others who had come to Hogwarts after it had been retaken, and others who had turned up spontaneously at the time and place indicated in the message they had disseminated to as many people as could be contacted. When at one point Ron glanced behind him, he was sure the procession had grown from what set off from Loncoln's Inn Fields.

They passed under St Paul's on their left, the cathedral sitting at an angle of 45 degrees to its old position. At the point where Cannon Street started its diagonal descent back towards the river, the main hulk of the Ministry came into view, its black appendages snaking off it as it sat in the middle of Sorcery Square. As usual the building was largely in darkness, with only a scattering of faint lights issuing from within. As they came within sight of their destination, the marchers slowed their pace. Their footsteps beat out a regular pace as they marched under the glare of the glass office buildings. Whenever they glanced up they glimpsed onlookers following the procession from their office windows. At last they left the traffic and the fumes behind them and came out into the clearer, colder air of Sorcery Square. The police cordon was still set up in front of the Ministry, seemingly manned with reinforcements, judging from the extra police cars parked on the square. As they drew nearer, a solitary figure emerged from the police presence and started walking towards them across the square.

* * *

_Is that all of them_? The procession of wizards looked terribly small to Imogen against the vast expanse of Sorcery Square as she strode out to meet them. It wouldn't look very impressive on television: the press had come hoping to see a mass of witches descend on central London. She had heard the banter: _Do you think they'll arrive out of the sky on broomsticks_? _Will they hold a witches' sabbat in the square_? _Will they get lynched_? The square was surprisingly empty of witch hunters, but she had already had word (Mr Laceby of course) that minibuses with tinted windows were parked up in the side streets around the square. There would be more than enough of them to take on the wizards, if that was their intention.

'Err … good evening,' she called out when she was a few metres away, her voice getting a bit lost in the cold, echoing square. She scanned the crowd for familiar faces: she recognised Tobias Destrument, who was there with some of his people, and there was Sioned, standing in a little group of wizards from Caius's coven, next to Meredith, Caius's second-in-command. She couldn't see Caius himself. Sioned smiled and gave her a nervous little wave. Officially she had the day-off work. Imogen wasn't sure if she was going to be coming back.

'Hello there,' replied Ron Weasley. He seemed rather casual, almost cheerful.

'Um … is this everyone?' Imogen asked.

'Oh, we're expecting a few more,' replied Ron, still rather nonchalant.

'Ok,' said Imogen. 'When do you think they might arrive?'

'Very soon,' came the reply. Then Ron turned to face the crowd of wizards behind him.

'Get ready!' he shouted, slowly drawing his wand from his pocket.

The wizards assembled behind him fanned out and drew their wands. The apparitions started almost immediately. A hundred or so became five hundred. Then a thousand. Then several thousand. There were wizards of all ages, many of them no more than teenagers.

'Looks like magic may have started to appeal to our wizarding youth once again,' remarked Kingsley. Ron nodded silently.

'Excuse me,' said a voice off to Ron's left. He looked round and saw a blonde youth with an acne-scarred face.

'Yes?' said Ron.

'Is Harry Potter here? I heard he woke up.'

'He's on a separate mission at the moment,' Ron replied.

'Can you give him a message when you see him?'

'I suppose so.'

'Tell him that the wand dealer he once followed to Southwark Bridge has stopped dealing in wands and that I'm sorry for punching him in the stomach.'

'Ok,' Ron replied, slightly nonplussed. 'I'll tell him. Now it's time to get on with the show. You got your wand ready?'

The young wizard grinned at him.

'Oh yeah, absolutely.'

Five thousand wands were raised towards the Ministry building. White lights began to seep from the ends of the wands, leaking out into the night sky, forming into the shapes of countless creatures and other stranger forms. The white shapes leapt upwards into the air and then began to shoot towards the facade of the Ministry building. As they approached its black walls, they began to disperse and swoop in every direction, before disappearing through invisible holes in the surface of the walls. For a moment the building was illuminated white, then the next it was all black again.

* * *

The opening into the Ministry's catacombs was still open. It looked just as Hermione remembered it. Judging from the accumulation of dust, no one had passed through there since Lillian had opened it.

'What do you reckon she actually did once she opened it?' remarked Argenta, standing at her side. 'Did she go for a quick stroll around the Ministry?'

'Don't know,' Hermione replied, staring into the opening. 'I don't know what happened here exactly.'

She still didn't fully understand how the opening of the gateway had broken the enchantments guarding the Ministry to the surface. The tunnel from the river now led uphill, in some places quite steeply, its walls buckled and twisted by the force exerted on it by the Ministry as it pushed its way upwards. Here and there the wall had collapsed altogether, forcing them to climb through and over ancient masonry and earth. Not far from the opening some old packing crates had tumbled through a hole in the wall into the tunnel, apparently out of some London basement.

'It wasn't as if she led a horde of witch hunters into the Ministry,' remarked Harry.

'No,' Hermione replied. 'Thank goodness she didn't.'

'Since the Separation that used to exist between the magical and non-magical worlds had become so threadbare,' said Isaac, 'breaking the enchantments was probably easier than you might think.'

I don't suppose we'll ever know exactly,' said Hermione. _I should have asked Lillian when I had the chance_.

'Well, it doesn't matter now,' said Caius. He and Osian were already crossing the threshold into the Ministry. The others followed swiftly behind them. They found themselves in a seemingly abandoned passageway that was part-corridor, part-tunnel, roughly hewn out of rock. The corridor was lit by some sort of magical light, still burning dimly right down in the depths.

'Ready?' said Caius to Osian. Osian nodded silently and led them forward along the corridor, into the Ministry.

'Where are we exactly?' asked Harry.

'Only two levels below the lowest offices,' he replied, glancing back over his shoulder for a moment, his pale blonde hair almost white in the witch light. 'Three below Muggle Relations.'

'You certainly know your stuff,' said Argenta admiringly, as she moved quickly and stealthily just behind him.

'Particularly as he's never been inside the Ministry before,' added Caius.

'Is that right?' said Harry. 'You don't have a map either by the looks of it.'

'It's all up there,' said Caius, pointing to Osian's head.

'Well, we didn't have much else to do the last few months,' said Osian in an almost apologetic tone.

The corridor ended in a crude stairwell, carved into the rock.

'No lifts this far down,' said Osian, who was first onto the stairs.

No sound reached them out of the silence and gloom as they went up the stairs. After two floors they came out onto another corridor. This one had the more orderly look of a typical Ministry corridor. After a quick glance into the silent penumbra of the corridor they moved on.

'This is my floor,' Argenta murmured as they came out onto the next. She raised her wand and headed a little way along the corridor, casting light around her. She stopped a little way down, holding her wand downwards so that it sprayed light across the floor: the corridor was strewn with papers.

'Do you think they keep people down here?' she asked.

'The doors are open,' said Hermione. 'There can't be anyone being kept down here.'

'The prisoners are grouped together, closer to the atrium,' Osian commented.

'We should go,' Isaac added.

Silently they made their way upwards, still no sound of life reaching them through the thick walls of the stairwell. Then out of the silence, an echoing, clanging sound began above their heads. Osian, who was in the lead, stopped as soon as he heard it. The others froze in turn. The banging sound continued, repeating every few seconds, sometimes with a longer pause, sometimes with a shorter one.

'What level are we on?' said Isaac.

'Between one and two,' replied Osian.

'Could that noise be what I think it is?' said Harry.

'What do you think it is?' said Argenta.

'Cell doors,' said Harry. 'Opening and shutting.'

* * *

Five thousand wizards stood in silence in Sorcery Square, watching the Ministry building.

Two minutes had passed since the wizards had released their strange spectral animals into the night air. _Patronuses_ they were called, as Imogen now knew. It was one of the nicer forms of magic she had had the chance to witness. The nicest part of it had been seeing the smiles on the wizards' faces as they cast the spell, some of them mouthing the words of the incantation.

'How long should we wait?' came a voice from the crowd behind her.

'We're going nowhere,' Ron replied firmly.

'Fair enough,' said Imogen,' but how long can we really wait here?'

'Until we get a sign, one way or another,' said Kingsley Shacklebolt. She nodded to him, almost deferentially. He was a sort of minister after all.

Another two minutes passed. Then a greenish light suddenly began to blink, low down on the Ministry's dark facade. It slowly grew, spinning on its axis, coming nearer and nearer to the crowd, which watched it in transfixed silence. When it came into view, Imogen could see that it was in the form of a small bird of prey, like a kestrel, only glowing a pale green colour. The kestrel hovered above the crowd. Then it spoke with a man's voice.

'We're breaking out,' it said. _I know that voice_. After a few moments the face came to her: it was the face she had seen through the cell door in Sorcery Square. _Harold Hawkwell, that was his name_. Then the kestrel disappeared.

* * *

Osian swung the door open and one by one they stepped out onto the corridor. The irregular noises continued and indistinct voices could be heard.

'Very near the atrium,' said Osian.

They headed along the corridor, but suddenly froze, their wands raised and at the ready. Another figure was standing at the far end of the corridor. He was a thin, gangly man with a dark, bedraggled beard. He stopped and looked at them, peering down the corridor.

'I must be seeing things,' said the man, his voice echoing down the corridor. 'That looks like Harry Potter.'

Harry stepped forward.

'Actually it is me,' he replied firmly.

'Are you a prisoner here?' shouted Isaac in a commanding voice.

'Not anymore,' said the man.

'Then come this way if you want out to get out of here,' shouted Harry.

The man began to lope down the corridor, his limbs obviously stiff from months of confinement. He grinned through his beard at the group of wizards before him, looking with bewilderment from face to face.

'Harry Potter and Hermione Granger … so you really have come at last to get us out of here.'

'That's right,' said Hermione. 'What's your name? I think I recognise you.'

'Dominick Kirwan,' said the man. 'International Trade in Magical Supplies Department.'

He paused for a moment, his expression rather distant.

'We saw the patronuses,' he went on. 'Thousands of them. It was incredible. Then the safe wizards started opening cell doors and telling us to get out. I thought it was a trick, so I ran for it.'

'It's not a trick,' said Harry.

'But why did the safe wizards open the cells?' said Hermione.

Suddenly there were more voices down the corridor.

'Watch out!' yelled a voice and the wizards drew their wands. 'Safe wizards!' A loose group of people were looking at them from the other end of the corridor, their faces dazed, their movements jittery.

'They're not safe wizards!' yelled Kirwan at them. 'Harry Potter's come to get us out of here.'

'Harry Potter?' said one of the wizards, in a voice more composed than the others looked. He paused to look down the corridor.

'Being in here really has driven you mad, Dominick,' said the man, almost jokingly.

'He's not mad,' said Harry, walking down the corridor to meet him, his voice friendly and relaxed. 'Come and see for yourself.'

'I will at that,' came the reply. Then the wizard started to walk slowly down the corridor, his wand raised, but not pointed at them.

'That certainly looks like Harry Potter,' said the wizard as he walked. 'But maybe I've gone mad too.'

The light from his wand illuminated the wizard's features: oval glasses and crow's feet, and a small, smiling mouth. Hermione knew him now: Tadgh O'Dowd, the Ministry's chief accountant.

'I suppose now wouldn't be the time to be asking for an explanation,' said O'Dowd as he drew alongside them.

'Not really,' Harry replied. 'But once we're all out of here I'll fill you in on everything. Although I've been comatose for most of it.'

'So this really is an escape you've come to offer us?' asked O'Dowd.

'Yes,' said Harry, gesturing down the corridor. 'It's this way.'

* * *

The door to the Ministry opened. The massed wizards in Sorcery Square drew themselves in readiness. A group of figures started to emerge from the door, striding purposefully towards the police cordon. One of them fired a curse, and a policeman at the cordon dropped to the ground, stunned.

'Here come the safe wizards,' said Kingsley Shacklebolt, already raising his wand and stepping forward to meet them.

Ron turned to Imogen.

'You'd better get out of here now,' he said. Imogen looked at him and at the wizards emerging from the Ministry then glanced to her right, to the near side of the square. She hesitated.

'There are witch hunters behind us too,' came a loud voice from the crowd.

'Go now!' Ron shouted, pointing away from the Ministry building. She stepped away, walking quickly across the square, her footsteps making far too much noise on the hard ground. Finally she reached the line of buildings that swept around the edge of the square. Stepping into the shadows under the awning of an office building, she turned to see what was happening. At that moment she heard the sound of tires screeching and a minibus roared out of a side street onto the square. The minibus stopped abruptly some way out in the middle of the square, while two similar vehicles pulled up next to it in quick succession. The vans' sliding doors were wrenched open from the inside and men started pouring out into the square, heading for the crowd of wizards.

* * *

The main atrium of the Ministry of Magic was strangely quiet. It reminded Hermione of evenings when she used to leave the office late, one of the last ones to leave. Many prisoners had finally left the Ministry, following the route down through the building and down the passage to the Dowgate. Osian, Argenta and Isaac had taken the dangerous mission of roaming the corridors for stray prisoners and showing them the way out. More than a thousand wizards had been imprisoned in the Ministry: there was no way of knowing how many of them had got out.

Harry, Hermione and Caius had come to the atrium to look for Mr Marchelow. _Find Marchelow_, Isaac had said, _and you'll probably find the Array_. _His office overlooks the atrium_, Osian had told them. _You can cross the atrium to go up to his office, or maybe he'll come down to you_. They began to walk across the atrium, their wands out of sight, their steps echoing in the emptiness.

'We're sitting ducks,' Harry murmured.

'And we're probably being filmed as well,' Caius added. Hermione said nothing. They walked on.

'That's his office, up there,' said Caius, gesturing vaguely at a window one floor above the atrium. The window was lit. They were now in full view of the window. A dark silhouette was visible in the light, motionless. As they watched the glass dissolved and a balcony formed itself across the opening. Then the dark figure stepped out onto the balcony, flanked by two other dark figures bearing wands.

'It's him,' whispered Caius.

Mr Marchelow placed his hands on the parapet of the balcony, seemingly in full confidence that it would hold him. He was dressed in black. A dark, heavy beard hid much of his face. He leaned stiffly over the parapet and looked down at the wizards, his neck tilting sideways as if he was recoiling in disgust at the sight of them.

'You imagine this is a victory, do you?' said Mr Marchelow. 'You imagine the people of this country will thank you for sneaking in here and releasing thousands of witches to wreak mayhem in their communities? You imagine the people of this country will condone the rest of your brood for marching brazenly through the streets of London and brawling out in front of this place?'

'You imagine they approve of you and what you've been doing?' shouted Harry. 'As far as I can make out, the people of this country find you and your friend Mr Morley much more dangerous and sinister than us wizards.'

'This is a sad day, nonetheless,' said Mr Marchelow. 'That I should stand here and be mocked by the most notorious wizard in the country. Practically raised from the dead, so I understand. Probably rotting under his clothes. And here next to you stands the witch who undoubtedly performed that abominable act. There is some little, grim satisfaction in looking at this vile creature, who, as I understand it, has spent the last two years steeping herself even deeper in the black arts. And now I see the pair of you, I have to admit that your appearance lives up to your terrible reputation. Somehow I thought you might hide your true nature better. But there is truly a look of demonic derangement about you. Even I can scarcely look at you, and I have looked into the dead eyes and rotten hearts of many a witch and wizard. And to complete the picture, I see here the leader of the most wanted coven in the country, with his twisted, cruel smile and mocking eye. Yes, one look at the three of you and everyone will be convinced that witches are harmless.'

'This is a waste of time,' said Hermione witheringly. 'There is absolutely no point in you speaking to us or in us speaking to you. We are what we are and you are what you are. Your organisation is discredited. You will empty the Ministry tonight, disarm your tamed wizards and hand over the Array. After that you can file all the lawsuits you like and fight your hopeless fight through the courts until you run out of money.'

'No,' said Mr Marchelow. 'The fight will continue on the streets of this country, in the safe houses where you hold your meetings, in the woods and in the lonely places where you lurk. The witches released tonight will be hunted down. And many will die here tonight, the victim of your reckless acts of trespassing and hooliganism. You three will certainly not walk out of here.'

'Are you so desperate as to make open threats now?' shouted Harry.

'Why, who do you think is listening down here?' replied Mr Marchelow.

_It's true_, said Hermione, speaking directly into Harry and Caius's minds. _No one can see us, or him. Not yet anyway_.

Meanwhile, Mr Marchelow was embarking on another fine speech.

'Outside, blood is being spilled in Sorcery Square as we speak. Some of it is the tainted blood of witches, some the innocent blood of the brave men who have come to defend this country. That fight goes on in full view of the country. But within these walls, no one is watching.'

_Keep him talking_, she said to the two of them. Her mind was travelling up out of the Ministry and down into Sorcery Square. Wizards and witch hunters were fighting, the police trying to separate them. Crowds surged against each other, cars were on fire, while the police made arrests and the injured were dragged and stretchered away. But she had to move away from the fight, searching instead for film crews reporting on the scenes of violence. It wasn't hard to find one. She reached out her hand, so to speak, for the camera and grabbed it.

'There is a full list of all the wizards you've kept locked up in here,' said Caius. 'You'll have to account for them.'

'But not for you,' Mr Marchelow replied. 'You sneaked in here unannounced, like rats spewing from the cellars. Officially you are not here. So we can do what we like with you.'

_Better and better_. _Keep going_, _you're being filmed now_.

'You'll have to catch us first,' said Harry. 'But face it, you've lost. Your prisoners are escaping as we speak. Your band of safe wizards is dwindling: they were only hired hands anyway. Their loyalty will easily be bought back. There will be no more victims.'

'Oh but there are already,' shouted Mr Marchelow. And he raised his hands into the air above him. At that, one of the silent wizards flanking him turned back for a moment, casting a charm. The next moment, the wizard turned to the front again, his wand now outstretched in the air above him. Above the heads of Mr Marchelow and his protectors, a number of limp bodies were floating in the air, held aloft by the charm. Then the wizard flashed his wand in a downward motion and the bodies came crashing down around Harry, Hermione and Caius. They jumped out of the way then looked down at the bodies lying around them on the floor of the atrium. There were seven of them, Hermione noted grimly to herself. Their eyes were closed, and blood leaked from their wounds. She scanned their faces to see if she knew them. One man's face she recognised from the corridors of the Ministry. His name was Silas. She didn't know his last name. With a pang of shock she recognised one of the faces as that of Poppy Bailey, a safe wizard, Mr Marchelow's own personal bodyguard. She remembered her from Hogwarts. She had been in Ravenclaw, a couple of years ahead of her and Harry. _They only just died_. _Their spirits have not gone far_.

'At least the world has been ridden of a few witches,' said Mr Marchelow, looking down with some satisfaction from his balcony. 'May many more follow. The cleansing of this country will begin this evening!'

The two safe wizards threw themselves down from the balcony, firing curses at Harry, Hermione and Caius. Harry and Caius deflected the curses and engaged the wizards with curses of their own. In an instant Hermione was up on the balcony, a few inches away from Mr Marchelow. He took a couple of steps back in reply.

'You said that within these walls there are no witnesses,' said Hermione coolly. 'You're wrong.'

Mr Marchelow said nothing. He was struggling to meet her gaze, but couldn't quite manage it.

'You're being filmed,' she shouted.

'I don't believe you,' he replied.

'Don't believe me if you like, it won't help you at all.'

Down below the atrium had fallen silent again.

She stepped forward and grabbed Mr Marchelow by the arm.

'And another thing,' she said, lowering her voice to a whisper so that only he could hear her. '_They_ have seen you too. Seven witnesses are leaving this place, carrying your name with them.'

Something like breath seemed to ripple the air between them.

_Robert Marchelow_, said the voice. It was the voice of Poppy Bailey. Hermione turned in the direction of the voice.

'He will face justice here first, Poppy,' she said.

'_We will wait at the doorway,'_ said Poppy's voice. '_Time means nothing to us.'_

Mr Marchelow stood frozen on the balcony. Now Harry and Caius were by Hermione's side, their wands trained on Marchelow. But he made no attempt to resist, his gaze fixed on the point from where Poppy's voice had been heard. On a hunch, Hermione reached into Mr Marchelow's jacket pocket and pulled out a small, black case, not much larger than a cigarette box.

'We'll be looking after this for the time being,' she said.

Mr Marchelow made no response. His eyes were dark and empty.

Harry touched Hermione gently on the arm.

'We should let the others know,' he said, smiling vaguely at her.

She nodded. The three of them jumped down from the balcony. Standing by the side of the dead they released patronuses that leapt away through the corridors of the Ministry, first to Argenta and Isaac and Osian, and then out into the night air, speaking to wizards on both sides. '_It's over'_ was the message they carried.


	79. The penitence of Lillian Herrick - Ch 32

32\. Hidden city

_Can't believe I'm back at school_. Iona rearranged the books on the table in front of her for the third time then set about looking for something in her bag. She glanced up at the other students filing into the classroom, each one staring in her direction as they made their way to their places, some whispering to each other. _They'll get over it. It's the first day of term. It's normal._

Since she was repeating the year she didn't know most of them. Some faces were familiar from the corridors or the school playing field, while others were completely unknown to her. '_I don't advise you talk about what happened_,' Miss Holdsworth, her new form teacher, had told her. '_We've had quite enough talk about magic anyway_.' That was true - she didn't want to talk about magic anymore either.

'_They'll be scared of you_,' Simeon had told her on the way to school that morning. He was still at her school, only now he was in the upper sixth. She liked his real name, and liked the fact that she was the only person at school who knew it. He had been in hiding for a while with his family when everyone found out they were wizards. '_They're scared of me now_,' he had told her. '_That's one perk at least_.' Spectre had turned little figure-of-eights by their side as they stood talking at her front gate, rubbing first against his leg then against hers. _I'm sorry I never told you I was a wizard_, he had said to her. She had told him to forget about it - given what had happened she understood his reasons. He had offered to wait for her outside her classroom when breaktime started - with a little subtle suggestion from her. The Circle was going to be handy for things like that, although she was going to keep it up under control of course.

She had disliked telling her mother that she would never speak to the others again. _Justin, Eva, Rachel_. _Hermione_. In any case, it wasn't like she needed an email address or phone number to contact them.

'_What about Miss Herrick_?' Iona had asked her teacher. '_What was everyone told about her?' 'Only that she died tragically, murdered by a man who mistook her for a witch_.'

She looked up when the bell rang, pushing her hair out of her eyes and smiling at the teacher. Then she glanced around the faces in the classroom, being careful to make eye contact with one or two of them. _Eyes bright and clear. A good student. Completely normal._

'Welcome to the sixth form,' said Miss Holdsworth, standing stiffly beside her desk and looking at the class with a kind of haughty wariness. She was obviously going to be a completely different kind of teacher. Iona looked down at the table, letting her hair quickly cover her eyes again. In an instant she had wiped the tiny tear from her eye. _Helpless before the pain of the other._

* * *

Imogen lifted the edge of the net curtain and looked down into the square below. Hermione Granger was standing on the steps leading up to the front door of the building. She ran a hand through her ponytail as she presumably checked the flat numbers for the right doorbell to press. She quickly located it and Imogen buzzed her in.

She had the same haunted look as that night when Imogen had seen her leaning over the body of Lillian Herrick. She seemed more tranquil, resigned almost, but she still seemed somehow out of sync with her surroundings. She was looking around her with a kind of dazed interest. _Probably for the best that Lorna's in Adelaide at the moment_.

'How are you?' said Imogen. She hoped it wasn't too ludicrous a question given the circumstances.

'I'm fine,' Hermione replied. It was the first time she had seen her smile. 'I was just looking at your flat. I feel like I've been here before.'

'It's possible, I suppose,' said Imogen.

'This is going to sound a bit weird,' said Hermione. 'But then again everything I say probably sounds a bit weird. In another life I live in this flat.'

'Right,' said Imogen.

'Sorry,' said Hermione, reaching out and touching her with a cold hand. 'Don't mind me. To be honest, I'm really tired of being so weird. But I'm telling the truth.'

'Well,' said Imogen, 'I've had to swallow my disbelief over quite a few things in my job. Actually believing in magic for one thing. So why shouldn't I believe in parallel lives too?'

'Yes, why not,' said Hermione, smiling.

'Anyway, why don't you sit down?' said Imogen. 'I suppose you know where everything is.'

'Actually the decor is a bit different when I live here,' Hermione replied. Imogen wasn't sure if she was joking.

'Would you like a cup of tea?' she asked.

'I'd love one,' said Hermione, sinking down onto the sofa.

'I've got some butterfly cakes too,' Imogen added. 'I made them myself, which is a rare occurrence. Since I've been on sick leave I've had a lot of time on my hands.'

'That sounds really nice, thanks,' replied Hermione.

When Imogen came back with the cups of tea and homemade butterfly cakes on a tray, Hermione was sitting quite still on the sofa, her eyes fixed on the window.

'They'll be here soon, I expect,' said Imogen, putting the tray down on the coffee table.

Hermione looked back. She looked paler than when she had come in.

'Sorry,' she said, 'I just have these moments sometimes. My thoughts get a bit lost. Harry has them too.'

Imogen sat down at the other end of the sofa.

'I don't suppose there's anything I can do to help you.'

'No,' said Hermione. 'Sorry again for being so weird.'

'Don't worry about it,' said Imogen. 'Plenty of people have called me weird in my life. When she heard that I'd been offered the job at the Agency for Magical Affairs, my mother said 'Well that should suit you down to the ground'.'

Hermione smiled, her expression warmer.

'You were obviously the right person for the job. That must be why Lillian picked you to get involved in her … her arrangements.'

'So she was really responsible for everything?'

'For making the world know that wizards exist? Basically yes.'

'But as far as I understand it, she did that sort of for the fun of it?'

Hermione's face darkened.

'Revealing us? Yes, sort of. She wanted to wake us from our complacency as well. But really, everything she did was for a different reason altogether.'

'What was it?'

'Redemption. Or a kind of redemption anyway.'

They paused in silence.

'Do you regret that your world is no longer secret?'

Hermione chewed her lip for a moment.

'People have died because of it, and others have been arrested, tortured and terrorised. Those people are all on Lillian's conscience. But she wanted it that way. None of it had to happen, but even if wizarding society hadn't been exposed, other people would have died, or been hurt in some way or another. But one good thing that's come out of this is that wizards seem more unified now. And lots of younger wizards who were losing interest in magic have suddenly become proud of being a wizard again. That's about as much analysis as I can manage.'

Imogen swallowed.

'My life would certainly have been different.'

Hermione half laughed.

'So would mine. And despite what I just said I haven't felt so happy in a long time. Despite everything I just feel like I'm in the right place. That's the selfish response, anyway.'

'Don't you have a right to it?'

'I don't know. Maybe I do, maybe I don't.'

'What are you going to do now?'

'That's a good question. For now at least all I'm going to do is witness the next step in the history of wizarding society. Together with you and Caius, and Harry of course.'

'You're heroes a second time,' said Imogen.

Hermione shook her head.

'Ron's the hero now. He led the retaking of Hogwarts and got himself bloodied up out in front of the Ministry of Magic. I'm proud of him. He deserves the limelight. He might end up being quite a good leader. Harry and I just did some stuff behind the scenes. A lot of skulking about in dark places basically.'

'So I heard,' said Imogen, deliberately lowering her voice

Hermione looked at her sadly.

'But I want to distance myself from all that as much as I can.'

She didn't look as if she was managing it all that well.

'I just want to try and live normally,' she added. 'For once in my life. I'm all magicked out.'

'I suppose you can choose not to do magic,' Imogen remarked.

A glimmer of a smile crept onto Hermione's face. It even had a kind of a mischievous spark about it.

'It's harder than you think,' she replied. 'I tried not doing it, but I always still needed it. But now I think that maybe I've learned finally not to need it.'

Imogen looked at her a little oddly.

'It's funny,' she said. 'Magic's still so new to me. Not that I can do any of course. But I feel like I know so little about it. I want to know more.'

Hermione smiled again.

'Oh, I understand exactly what you mean. Though I'm sure you can find out a lot more about it from Caius.'

Imogen looked away for a moment. Then she looked back at Hermione with a sly smile.

Suddenly Hermione reached out and took Imogen by the hands.

'I can show you, if you like, what I'm looking for,' she said. 'With a little magic.'

'Ok,' said Imogen, her curiosity piqued.

Hermione brushed back a long strand of hair that had slipped out of her ponytail and looked straight into Imogen's eyes.

'Which kind of magic is this?' she asked in a low voice. 'I know you practise two kinds.'

'This is the kind called the Seven-Pointed Circle,' said Hermione. 'It went into the making of what I'm going to show you.'

As she spoke her last words, the living room dissolved. Instead Imogen saw before her a landscape of green hills dropping away towards a grey sea. On one of the hills stood a small cottage. A cool, steady rain was falling on the scene.

'Over there,' said Hermione, pointing towards the house. 'That's where I'd like to get to.'

Just then the doorbell rang. Imogen looked around her and they were back in her living room.

Hermione glanced round at the window.

'I think they're here …'

Imogen let them in. When they entered the flat, Harry too looked around with a quizzical expression. He whispered something in Hermione's ear as he kissed her on the cheek and she nodded discreetly. Caius seemed to be in a particularly good mood. Imogen kissed him for a long moment and sat down very close to him on the sofa.

'Well folks', said Caius, resting his hands on spread-eagled knees, 'I hope you're ready for this momentous occasion.'

'Just out of curiosity,' said Harry, turning to Imogen, 'and no offence intended, but I was wondering who got you your invite? It's just that I doubt that _he_ (here pointing at Caius) has the clout, and I think I understood that you're pretty much the only non-magical person attending. Not even the Prime Minister is going.'

'Well,' said Imogen, colouring slightly. 'I will be reporting to the Prime Minister's Office on what I see, for one thing. And as for the invitation, it was Mr Weasley who gave it to me.'

Caius smiled.

'It's _Mr Weasley_ already is it? Yes, I suppose he would have the authority …'

'I didn't realise I'd be the only … non-magical person attending,' Imogen replied. 'I almost expected the press to be there.'

'The _wizarding_ press will be there,' said Hermione. 'Technically you're the only non-magical person with an invite. Rachel Thirlwell will be there, and although some wizards would describe her as a muggle, she's a long way from being anything of the sort. But I think it's right that some things are done like in the good old days, when wizards were still secret.'

* * *

More than a hundred witches and wizards stood on the shore of the Black Lake. Each of them had memorised part of the blueprint for the new city that was to be raised there; each wizard had a section of street, or a building, or part of the surrounding wall to conjure. Ron stood at the centre of the group, Kingsley Shacklebolt and Vantricia Bellu at his side. Myra Tremayne, Mortimer Knott and Luther Penhaligon were all in the vicinity, though they might just as well have been trying to position themselves close to Ron as to Kingsley. Tobias Destrument and Draco Malfoy were also in prominent positions. Just behind them stood Beth McAuliffe, Ginny, Neville, Luna, Mr and Mrs Weasley, George and Percy Weasley, Professor McGonagall and Hagrid. Beyond them wizards and witches stood in circles and lines fanning out from the central group. Harry and Hermione stood off to one side, together with Isaac, Argenta, Henoc and Rachel. Imogen stood next to Caius, who was discreetly holding her hand. For a moment she glanced behind her at Sioned, who winked at her from among the ranks of the Coven of the White Tooth.

The idea of a new wizarding city had been Kingsley's. He had worked on it during the months of exile, pencil sketching its layout, position and relief on countless sheets of paper, all annotated with indications on materials, the number of wizards it could hold, even on new magical protections that could be put in place. _It became a kind of obsession_, Kingsley had explained when he first presented the idea to the Union of Wands. _It kept me going on when we were on the road. I figured it was the least I could do, to offer something new for wizarding society, after being such an indifferent Minister for Magic_.

Ron was the first to raise his wand. He fired a white mark, which rose into the sky over the water, spinning and coalescing into itself and then dropping down and breaking apart across the water's surface. Then the gathered witches and wizards raised their wands aloft and did the same until the surface of the Black Lake was lit up with a hundred shimmering white lines. After a few moments, the white lights began to darken and grow thicker, forming into a single, golden-yellow sheet that lay over the water. Then the illumination faded from the sheet, leaving earth and rock behind it, forming an island with sloping rock shores rising to a plateau overlooking the lake.

They all raised their wands again, each concentrating on his or her piece of the foundation. Pale lines of energy shot from the ends of the raised wands and moved swiftly across the sky in an arc. When the lines reached their position in the preordained city, they exploded in all directions, tracing wall and street and square, and coalescing until the spectral outline of the new city stood before them in the chill morning, a grid of glowing lines and forms.

The gathered wands were raised once again, this time firing out a kind of shimmering black light. Along the line of the outer walls a great earthwork was raised straight out of the ground, and stone was brought up from deep under the ground and raised in a protective wall atop the earthwork. Smaller stones and rocks were summoned, colliding in mid-air, crashing, interlocking and merging before descending to the ground to form the city's street network.

All wands were lowered apart from those of the group at the centre of the gathering. They kept their wands aloft, and fired another black light, which coalesced at the centre of the new city and pulsed around the open square that now lay there. The black light rose into the sky and branched in all directions, surrounding the square. Then it dissipated, revealing a great stone hall fronted by a wide, pillared courtyard. The city glimmered over the lake, a reflection of the walls of Hogwarts, which lay above it on the hills overlooking the water.

Now the other assembled witches and wizards set about raising houses, shops and other public buildings on the newly laid streets of the city. This went on for almost an hour, followed by a good twenty minutes spent weaving a multi-faceted cloak of protection around the completed city. Then the wizards and witches walked freely through the gates of the city and went to their new homes to rest.

* * *

At dusk the courtyard at the centre of the city was empty. A cold, damp breeze was blowing around the courtyard. It was the typical kind of breeze that blew over the Black Lake, the kind that Ron, Harry and Hermione had felt countless times in their school days whenever they came down to the lake.

Ron stood in the middle of the courtyard with his back to the great doors of what they were calling the Hall of the Union. That was its provisional name, anyway. Ron hoped they would come up with something a bit more inspired. He looked down to the far end of the courtyard, where an archway led out into the streets of the city. The hidden city. The unnamed city. As yet unnamed, anyway. They would need a name for it, of course. But that would come. They'd only just conjured the place up out of magic, mud and stone.

Two figures were standing under the entrance to the courtyard. Ron strode forward to meet them. They met somewhere out in the middle.

'So, what do you think?' said Ron.

'It's beautiful,' said Hermione. Ron smiled.

'Yeah, it's amazing,' said Harry. Ron smiled again.

'Glad you like it.'

'I was just wondering,' said Harry. 'What's going to happen to the Burrow now?'

'Nothing,' Ron replied. 'It's still there, Mum and Dad will still live there most of the time. But if they need to come up here, they'll have somewhere to stay.'

'If things go wrong again,' put in Hermione.

'Err… yeah, if things go wrong.' Ron agreed.

Part of the reason for creating the city on the Black Lake was for wizards to have a place of sanctuary in future, if they ever needed it. Some people intended to live there permanently, while others, like the Weasleys, quite understandably wanted to go on living where they always had. And now there was no particular danger associated with living in a place like Ottery St Catchpole, apart from the risk of random manifestations of anti-wizard feeling, which could happen anywhere wizards were known to live. On top of that, there was no more Array to monitor the casting of spells. The device hadn't been destroyed though, Hermione recalled quietly to herself. It hadn't actually left the Ministry of Magic, another artefact in the Department of Mysteries. _Let's hope no one gets tempted to try and use it again_.

The Ministry itself had resumed operations, though many of its old staff had been understandably reluctant to go back to work there. There was no putting it back underground, but work was under way, some magical and some non-magical, to give it a more wholesome appearance, one more in keeping with the neighbourhood. Apparently it was even going to acquire a visitor centre. _Will you be able to buy little plastic replicas of the Ministry_, Argenta had asked Ron. Its role in wizarding society was in the process of being redesigned too, with some its powers moving into new institutions that were emerging. For the first time, muggles would have a role to play in running wizarding affairs, much to the horror of certain illustrious wizarding families, who were determined to use their clout to make sure that any joint committees with muggles had as little influence as possible.

'So this is where your parliament will meet, is that right?' said Hermione, pointing to the tall, classical-looking building that dominated the courtyard.

'That's right, the Union of Wands,' Ron replied, glancing over his shoulder to have another look at the place.

'Who are its members?' said Hermione.

'Oh, the usual venerable witches and wizards. And me.'

'Good for you,' said Harry. 'You deserve it.'

'And good luck with those venerable witches and wizards,' added Hermione.

'Yeah, I know,' said Ron, smiling. He paused for a moment, then added in a rueful voice: 'Draco's been nominated.'

'The one and only Draco?' said Hermione, a smile at the corners of her mouth.

'Like I said, he was nominated,' Ron replied. 'But to give him his due, he's more sensible than he used to be.'

'Strictly speaking that's not saying much,' said Hermione.

'Anyway,' said Harry, patting Ron on the back. 'You'll be here to keep him in line.'

'Kingsley's accepted a nomination too, you know,' Ron protested.

'And what about Myra, and Mortimer, and Luther?' asked Harry wryly.

'Yeah, they've been nominated too,' Ron replied quietly.

'Are any of the people who were held prisoner in the Ministry among them?' Hermione asked. 'I heard that Harold refused his nomination.'

Ron nodded.

'He said he's retiring. But Tadgh O'Dowd has accepted.'

'Well that's something,' Hermione replied.

'48 wands we are in total,' said Ron.

'And all sorts of different views are represented,' said Hermione.

'Yeah, all sorts.'

They paused in silence for a few moments.

'Speaking of wands,' said Harry, 'we'd like to ask you a favour.'

Ron looked up, his brow furrowed.

'Yeah, what's that?'

'We want you to look after ours for us,' said Hermione.

'What do you mean?'

'We can't stay here,' said Harry.

Ron looked down at the ground. The paving stones were perfectly arranged, free of any defect or blemish. He had rather expected that they wouldn't stay. He hadn't a clue what it was they were going to do. Since the day they walked back into Hogwarts they had seemed to him secretive and inscrutable. The feeling had continued in the wake of the battle in Sorcery Square, at the funerals of the seven wizards who had been killed in the Ministry, in brief moments here and there when they'd had time to talk. They were always together and always a bit detached.

'More than that,' added Hermione. 'We have no use for magic at the moment.'

'So we thought you could keep them here for us,' said Harry. 'This seems like as safe a place as any.'

'We don't know what the protocol is for such cases,' added Hermione. 'And it seems a bit negligent to just leave them at home in a drawer and forget about them.' Where will home be? she wondered. They hadn't quite got to the point of discussing it yet, apart from a few snatches of conversation. Grimmauld Place was a possibility, but that would hardly be a break with the magical world. She had started work on her house under the red sky; not as a place to live, but as a kind of template for the kind of house she hoped they would find somewhere.

With that, the two of them reached into their pockets, took out their wands and held them out to Ron. Not sure what else to do, he took them and stuffed them into the pockets of his jacket.

'Thanks,' said Hermione.

'How long do you want me to keep them?' asked Ron.

'Don't know really,' said Harry. 'We may need them someday.'

'Just not for the foreseeable future,' said Hermione.

'Don't you think it would be safer if you kept them, wherever you're going?' asked Ron. 'The outside world has not exactly embraced wizards as part of the community. Not all of the witch hunters have given up.'

'No, they never will,' Hermione replied.

'We'll be alright,' said Harry. 'And besides, we can manage a bit of magic without having a wand in our hands.'

'You're choosing the muggles,' said Ron in a monotone voice. 'Why don't you want to join us here? We need all the good people we can.'

'It's not a question of choosing the muggles,' Hermione replied. 'It's just about going living somewhere quiet and out of the way.'

'Didn't you try doing that before?' Ron asked.

Hermione shot him a strange, pained kind of look and said nothing.

'We can't be public figures anymore,' said Harry. 'And as much as I value and esteem Draco, I don't really fancy trying to run the wizarding world together with him.'

Ron shrugged.

The wind whipped up for a moment, blowing their hair about.

'We just want to do something else really,' said Hermione.

'And after all,' Harry added. 'We're still actually pretty young.'

Hermione smiled.

'I suppose we are.'

She turned to Ron.

'It's going to be difficult, making all this work,' she said, gesturing at the city around them. 'But we have faith in you.'

'Are you going right now?' he asked, his voice coming out slightly wrong.

'We thought we'd go tomorrow,' said Hermione quickly. 'Or maybe the day after.'

'Yeah, it'd be nice to spend at least a night here,' Harry added. 'If there's room for us somewhere. Maybe have a drink or two with everybody.'

Ron grinned.

'I'm sure we can sort something out.'

* * *

The sun had come out, and the courtyard was divided into sections of light and shade from the enclosing pillars. As promised, Harry and Hermione had stayed two nights in the new city. It had been as much like old times as they could manage. They had caught up with as many people as possible. One particular surprise had been seeing Teddy there, who had been brought up especially to see his godfather. He had been in good spirits to the point of overexcitement, and had taken very naturally to Hermione's new status in Harry's life.

Harry and Hermione hugged Ron in turn then turned to go. At the last moment, Ron caught Hermione by the arm.

'Hermione, can I have a word, just for a moment?'

He had never quite found the moment over the previous two days: always too many people around, wanting to have a drink, talk about the future or reminisce.

With a nod to Hermione, Harry walked away and went to stand under a pillar at the courtyard's edge. He and Ron had said everything they needed to the night before, drinking wine on the roof of the house where they were staying after Hermione had gone to bed.

'What is it?' she asked, a glimmer of curiosity in her eyes.

Ron's face was sombre in the morning sun.

'I just wanted to say thanks.'

'Ron, the last thing you should be saying to me is thanks …'

Something in his expression made her stop short.

'Thanks for sending Fred to me, I mean,' said Ron. 'You know what I'm talking about, don't you?'

His eyes suddenly seemed to her like grey monochrome. _He knows what happened to him in the other place too._ His hand was cold on her arm.

'Yes, I know,' she replied. 'And in a way I'm not surprised that you know too.'

'It's just a feeling,' said Ron. 'The vaguest feeling. But I know it's true. I often think about it. What was it like there?'

She shivered.

'Are you sure you want to know? I mean, in a way, what happened there never really happened. Or not here at least.'

'Forget about all that. Just tell me one thing about him. Did he know too?'

She looked at him sadly, her eyes as cold as his. _Of course he would want to know that._

'Yes, he knew too. When he saw me, it was as if he could see both places, both destinies. It made him feel funny. But he had a few drinks and the effect wore off. When we left he was in his usual high spirits, him and George winding up your Mum.'

She felt his grip on her arm harden.

'I saw him too,' he murmured, his voice suddenly hoarse. 'He sort of paid me a visit.'

She smiled.

'I'm glad,' she said softly. 'Glad there are other ways of connecting here with there.'

Ron sort of chuckled to himself.

'I suppose he was just living a normal life.'

'He was,' said Hermione in a stronger voice. 'It was wonderful to see him and George walking towards me together. Terrifying, but lovely at the same time.'

Ron nodded, although his head barely moved.

Hermione raised her other arm to his.

'It was desperation that led me to agree to go there. I saw things I shouldn't have seen.'

She felt his muscles tighten and she let go of his arm.

'But it's just one version of events. One where the curse destiny intended for him caught you instead.'

'Is that what happened?' he asked, almost in a whisper.

'I don't know exactly what happened. If I dug deep enough into … well, into the other Hermione's memories, maybe I could see, but I don't want to. I just meant it as a metaphor.'

'Right,' said Ron in the same deflated voice.

'You know,' said Hermione, trying to seem brighter, 'taking into account all possible permutations, I think that the odds are in your favour. You're supposed to be alive. So make the most of it.'

Ron shot her a grim smile. She sounded a little like the old Hermione.

'I intend to.'

They looked at each for a moment in silence.

'What about you?' said Ron.

She seemed to look beyond him. Her eyes always seemed distant to him now.

'I can't quite get my head around it at the moment,' she replied.

'Around what?'

She paused before answering, as if she were contemplating how to answer.

'Well,' she began. 'Being alive, I mean.'

Another pause.

'Does that sound weird?'

Ron half-shrugged, half shook his head.

'I think I see what you're getting at.'

For an instant her eyes were with him again. But they brought with them a different kind of coldness.

'Don't look too closely,' she said, a trace of warning in her voice.

'I understand,' said Ron. 'Sorry.'

'You don't have to say sorry,' said Hermione. 'I meant that it's for your own good. There are things behind my eyes… But I don't want to talk about it. I don't think I even can.'

Her eyes flitted again to some distant point, as if she was looking for someone.

'Where's Harry?' she said, in an agitated, distracted tone.

'He's … he's waiting for you outside,' said Ron.

'I only …' she began, her voice faltering. 'I only … well, you know. I'm sorry.'

'I understand,' said Ron.

She seemed to come back to him.

'Anyway, bye for now,' she said finally.

'Um... bye.'

She started to go then stopped.

'Ron?'

'Yes.'

'You're going to be fine and I'm really happy for you.'

He smiled. She had been very sweet to Beth when they had met.

'But are you?'

She paused, thinking how to answer.

'Going to be fine?' she asked. 'It'll be a bit of a winding road but I think I will. Harry will keep me on it.'

'So you'll be coming back this way some time?'

She smiled.

'Count on it.'

Then she turned away and walked quickly back over the courtyard, disappearing into the shadows that rose under its walls.

He stood still in the centre of the courtyard. The sun was gone momentarily, hidden behind a cloud. At last he turned and looked around at the structure around him, and then out towards the horizon, waiting until the sun came out again. He walked back to the new oak doors of the Hall of the Union, the _parliament_ as Hermione had called it, took out his wand and spoke the incantation that made the doors open. He stood on the threshold, looking up at the carvings around the door, then glanced back over his shoulder at the now empty courtyard. With a rueful smile, he stepped over the threshold and went inside.

* * *

The morning sky over the Black Lake was covered, as they had seen it so many times before. The streets they walked on were pristine, gleaming new and strikingly empty.

'Do you think it'll work?' said Harry, suddenly glancing at Hermione.

'It's some sort of democracy,' she replied. 'I should think it's the least worst solution'.

The windows on the buildings as they passed were mute and dark, with many shutters closed and curtains still drawn. They turned onto a wide avenue lined on either side with grand buildings of multiple stories that led to the city's main gate.

'It is beautiful here, I have to admit, but it's surreal, don't you think?' said Hermione, looking up at a beautifully carven gable and the latticed window beneath it. She thought she saw someone looking down at them from the window, but she couldn't be sure.

'I suppose it'll look more real after a few years' exposure to the elements,' replied Harry. 'Although, are buildings made through magic affected by rain and snow and wind?'

'I don't know,' said Hermione. 'Maybe not. Maybe there's an enchantment for aging magical buildings. But when it comes to magic I have to admit I'm less curious than I used to be.'

They smiled at each other and walked on.

They passed under the gate that led out of the city and found themselves in front of its walls, on the brief rocky expanse that led down to the lake. A covered causeway led back to the shore. Isaac Edwards' car was parked not far from the lake's edge, He was going to be giving them a lift. Only they hadn't yet decided where they were going.

Hermione looked back at the walls of the wizarding city.

'Goodbye,' she said under her breath. 'And good luck.'

Slowly the gates before them faded into the grey morning. They set off along the causeway, which faded and disappeared behind their footsteps.

They looked back again. Now they could only see a vast, empty lake behind them. Even Hogwarts was hidden from view. It was still there of course, they knew it was there, just as the wizarding city was. But just then they didn't want to see them.

'So what do you want to do now?' said Harry, taking Hermione's hand as they stood on the shore.

Hermione smiled. She hoped the smile was a bright one.

'Just live.'

He smiled in reply.

'Sounds good to me.'

Her face darkened.

'Only …'

'What?'

'Are we properly alive, Harry? I'm not quite sure.'

He touched her cheek. The cold leapt to his finger and spread down his arm. As it crept inside, the cold within him sprang up to meet it, to mingle with it.

'We are,' he said firmly. 'Really we are.'

'It's funny,' she said, smiling as she touched his face. 'Being with you helps me keep the memory of the dead away, if you see what I mean?'

He nodded.

'Yes, I do.'

'You remember how we once said one look a year is enough?' she said, her hair blowing in the wind.

'Of course,' Harry replied. 'But I take it back now.'

Her expression brightened.

He took hold of her by the waist. The kiss was long and effortless.

'So,' said Harry when they broke apart. 'Right now I suppose we could pretty go anywhere or do anything?'

'Pretty much,' she replied languidly, wrapping her hands back around his neck.

They began to walk back towards the car. They could see Isaac and Argenta through the windscreen, looking discreetly away from them.

'How does Rome strike you as a destination?' he asked suddenly.

She smiled.

'I can picture us there. It's as if we've been before.'

He nodded and she could see he caught her meaning.

'But there's somewhere I'd like to go first, if that's ok.'

'There's no rush.'

'It won't be as glamorous as Rome though. There's someone there I need to see again. I hope she still has a spare room where we could stay for a while. Just for a while. That's all the planning I can possibly make for the time being.'

Harry smiled.

'What do you think?' she asked after a moment's silence.

He slipped his hand back into hers.

'I'll go with you,' he said.

The end


End file.
